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R.F.Binnie & Associates – Winner
Category: Construction Management and Supervision Services
For: John Hart - Highway 97, Bennett Creek to Link Creek
Sitting in the cold darkness a couple, both blind, are partially illuminated from the lights of a fire truck as they wait in a neighbors yard Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2003, while fire fighters exstinquish the blaze inside their home. The living room was destroyed in the fire while the rest of the home sustained smoke damage. The couple safely exited the home unharmed through the back door. The man preaches at a local nursing home and was most concerned about the condition of his two Braile Bibles that were still in the house.
This photo was awarded first place honors by the Associated Press for spot news coverage. The interesting thing is that my paper refused to use the photo with the story because it wasn't your typical news photo. I was only able to publish the photo at the end of the year, and very small, so that it could be entered into the AP contest.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Gabor Orosz approaches a curve hiding a stalled car next to the roadside inside MCity, the autonomous vehicle testing area in Ann Arbor, MI.
Orosz is testing his connected automated vehicle for safety features beyond the line of sight. A new generation of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) wireless communication technologies have been introduced to allow vehicles to share information with each other and with the fixed infrastructures.
Photo by Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering, Communications and Marketing
The dentists at Libertyville Dental Associates are proud to serve the Northshore community with a patient base spreading well across Gurnee through Vernon Hills. We are a group of Dentists that are committed to providing the best care for our patients. Our commitment is for each of our patients to keep their teeth healthy their whole life. This means we guarantee our work whether it is a tooth cleaning, fillings, crowns, veneers, or implants. Because we use the highest technology and the very best materials we are confident that your oral health will be second to none. As a group practice we are able to accomadate all schedules and dental tooth emergencies. Just visit us on the website at www.libertyvilledental.com , call 847-367-6360 or drop by at 1641 N. Milwaukee Ave. Libertyville IL 60048
Local Accession Number: FA_CC.000305
Connick Job Number: 3424
Title: David, narthex window, Grace Congregational Church, Framingham, Mass.
Statement of responsibility: K.O.S. Connick Assoc.
Creator/Contributor: Charles J. Connick Associates (creator)
Genre: Design drawings; Gouaches
Date created: 1960
Physical description: 1 gouache : color ; 23 x 16 cm.
General notes: Title from item, from additional material accompanying item, or from information provided by the Boston Public Library.
Date notes: Date from item.
Biographical and historical notes: Window designed for Grace Congregational Church, Framingham, Massachusetts.
Subjects: Stained glass; Windows
Collection: Charles J. Connick Gouaches - Massachusetts
Location: Boston Public Library, Arts Department
Shelf locator: Massachusetts Box #5
Rights: Rights status not evaluated.
Associates : Matter of Gender / Would I Bounce.. Back
Front cover
Fiction Records (1982)
FICSX 16
Artwork : Alan Macdonald, Baillie Walsh, Billy MacKenzie
"He weaves wry, slice of life observations reminiscent of Lyle Lovett and John Prine." Associated Press For more than 15 years, John Gorka has been one of the most beloved folks on the acoustic circuit. His compelling songs and chocolate baritone, combined with his self-deprecating manner and gentle humor, have earned him the reputation as a stellar performer. His live shows are not to be missed! www.johngorka.com
"If Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell had a daughter, this is how she’d sound." Entertainment Weekly Add Denice Franke’s name to the list of Texas treasures. She’s a songwriter of Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and Townes Van Zandt caliber, with a rich voice and a gift for great melody. You may have heard her sing harmonies with Nanci on One Fair Summer Evening and Once In A Very Blue Moon, or with Robert Earl Keen, Jr. on No Kinda Dancer. Hear her live: you’ll be hooked! www.denicefranke.com
"He weaves wry, slice of life observations reminiscent of Lyle Lovett and John Prine." Associated Press For more than 15 years, John Gorka has been one of the most beloved folks on the acoustic circuit. His compelling songs and chocolate baritone, combined with his self-deprecating manner and gentle humor, have earned him the reputation as a stellar performer. His live shows are not to be missed! www.johngorka.com
"If Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell had a daughter, this is how she’d sound." Entertainment Weekly Add Denice Franke’s name to the list of Texas treasures. She’s a songwriter of Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and Townes Van Zandt caliber, with a rich voice and a gift for great melody. You may have heard her sing harmonies with Nanci on One Fair Summer Evening and Once In A Very Blue Moon, or with Robert Earl Keen, Jr. on No Kinda Dancer. Hear her live: you’ll be hooked! www.denicefranke.com
"He weaves wry, slice of life observations reminiscent of Lyle Lovett and John Prine." Associated Press For more than 15 years, John Gorka has been one of the most beloved folks on the acoustic circuit. His compelling songs and chocolate baritone, combined with his self-deprecating manner and gentle humor, have earned him the reputation as a stellar performer. His live shows are not to be missed! www.johngorka.com
"If Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell had a daughter, this is how she’d sound." Entertainment Weekly Add Denice Franke’s name to the list of Texas treasures. She’s a songwriter of Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and Townes Van Zandt caliber, with a rich voice and a gift for great melody. You may have heard her sing harmonies with Nanci on One Fair Summer Evening and Once In A Very Blue Moon, or with Robert Earl Keen, Jr. on No Kinda Dancer. Hear her live: you’ll be hooked! www.denicefranke.com
Walmart associates and shareholders from around the globe gather during the 2012 Walmart Shareholders' Meeting. To watch the replay of the event, view videos, and join the conversation, visit www.walmartstores.com/shareholdersmeeting
hard T. Pascale, Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, United Kingdom at of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2013 in Dalian, China 13 September 2013. Photo by World Economic Forum
Today, Governor Charlie Baker ceremonially swore in five new Associate Justices to the Massachusetts Housing Court as part of the Administration’s expansion of the Court.
(Photo by Sam Berube, Office of the Governor)
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) Acting Associate Administrator Daniel Whitley listens to Georgian Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Levan Davitashvili during their meeting at the USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on February 22, 2018. USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.
Welcome to Shaldon Sailing Club.
Shaldon Sailing Club, founded in 1823 and is the third oldest in the UK. We are a small friendly family Club; we race several classes of dinghy throughout the summer, from early April to late September. Boats are kept on Shaldon beach during the season. We also run a Sail Training Course for prospective sailors aged over 10 years- adults are welcome.
We have a small clubhouse which we hope to extend in the near future so that it will be suitable for the land-based training and small social functions.
Most of our races are on a Sunday- see the Fixture Schedule . Shaldon Sailing Club is an ideal club to learn to race with. Being a Family Club, we have both learners and experienced sailors competing in the races and we are not over- competitive so that ‘learners’ will not get discouraged.
At Pevensey Castle
Pevensey Castle: a Saxon Shore fort, Norman defences, a medieval enclosure castle, and later associated remains
The monument includes Anderita Saxon Shore fort, traces of later, Norman defences, an enclosure castle, a 16th century gun emplacement and World War II defences situated on a low spur of sand and clay which now lies around 2km north west of the present East Sussex coastline at Pevensey. During the Roman and medieval periods the spur formed a peninsula projecting into a tidal lagoon and marshland, but coastal deposition and land reclamation have gradually built up the ground around it so that it is now completely land-locked. The roughly oval, north east-south west aligned Roman fort is the earliest of the structures which make up the monument and has been dated to the first half of the fourth century AD. Covering almost 4ha, the fort survives in the form of substantial ruins and buried remains. It is enclosed by a massive defensive wall with a flint and sandstone rubble core faced by coursed greensand and ironstone blocks, interspersed with red tile bonding courses. The whole is up to 3.7m thick and survives to a height of up to 8.1m. The wall was originally topped by a wall walk and parapet. Part excavation in 1906-8 showed that the wall was constructed on footings of rammed chalk and flints underpinned by oak piles and held together by a framework of wooden beams. Investigation of the internal face indicated that this was stepped upwards from a wide base so as to provide extra strength and support. Despite these precautions, a landslip on the south eastern side of the fort has resulted in the destruction of a c.180m length of the perimeter walls and, although fragments of the fallen masonry do survive, most have been removed over the years. Smaller sections of wall have also collapsed along the north western and eastern stretches. The defensive strength provided by the perimeter wall was enhanced by irregularly-spaced, externally projecting semicircular bastions with diameters of around 5m. There were originally at least 15 of these, of which 10 survive today. The fort was entered from its south western, landward approach by way of the main gateway. In front of this a protective ditch 5.5m wide was dug, and, although this became infilled over the years, a 40m stretch located towards its south eastern end has been recut and exposed. The ditch would have been spanned originally by a wooden bridge, although this no longer survives. The main gateway takes the form of a rectangular gatehouse set back between two solid semicircular bastions 8m apart. The 2.7m wide, originally arched entrance is flanked by two oblong guardrooms and the whole gateway structure projects beyond the inner face of the perimeter wall into the fort and is thought to have been originally two or even three storeys high. On the eastern side of the fort is a more simply designed subsidiary gateway, originally a 3m wide archway entrance, giving access to part of the adjacent Roman harbour, now overlain by Pevensey village. The extant archway is a modern reconstruction of the Norman rebuilding of the original entrance. Traces of a wooden causeway which led from it into the fort have been found during partial excavation. Midway along the north western stretch of perimeter wall is a now ruined postern c.2m wide, approached by a curved passage set within the wall. Part excavation between 1906-1908 indicated that the internal buildings which housed the garrison of up to 1,000 men, along with their livestock and supplies, were constructed of timber infilled with wattle and daub. A c.1m sq timber-lined Roman well was found in the south western sector of the fort, at the bottom of which were the remains of the wooden bucket with rope still attached. The well was found to have been filled with rubbish in Roman times and the presence of the bones of cattle, sheep, red deer, wild boar, wild birds, domestic dogs and cats, along with sea shells, gives some indication of the diet and lifestyle of the fort's original inhabitants. Anderita is thought to have been abandoned by its garrison by the latter half of the 4th century AD, and although little is known of its subsequent history until the 11th century, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a massacre of Britons by the invading Saxons at the fort in AD 491. The Bayeux Tapestry states that William the Conquerer landed at Pevensey in 1066, and the Norman army are believed to have made use of the Roman fort as one of their first armed camps. The defences at Pevensey and the surrounding land were granted to King William's half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain. The medieval defences then went through at least 300 years of development, culminating in the construction of a stone built enclosure castle within the largely intact walls of the earlier Roman fort. It is thought that the first Norman defences took the form of a wooden palisade surrounded by a bank and ditch, and a c.40m length of partially infilled ditch up to 9m wide which survives across the north eastern sector of the earlier fort may indicate their original extent. Limited excavations in 1993-94 showed that the ground surface in the south eastern sector of the fort, in the vicinity of the later stone-built keep, was artificially raised some time before 1200, suggesting that a motte may also have been constructed. The original Roman gateways were rebuilt and a new ditch dug in front of the south western gate. Most of the Norman defences and interior wooden buildings will now survive in buried form beneath the later medieval castle, although herringbone-pattern repairs to the Roman masonry, by then serving as the outer bailey of the medieval defences, also date from this time. Around 1100 the defences were strengthened and the accommodation improved by the addition of a masonry keep in the south eastern sector of the earlier fort. The subject of a complex history of alteration, collapse and repair, the keep utilises part of the earlier, Roman perimeter wall and bastions. It takes the form of a rectangular block measuring c.16.8m by c.9m internally, reinforced by apsidal projections on all sides. Now surviving in ruined form up to first floor level, the keep originally took the form of a tall tower with an entrance on the first floor. A rectangular building measuring 7.6m by 6m was later constructed in the south eastern angle between the keep and the Roman wall. At around 1200 work began on the construction of a smaller, stone-built inner bailey in the south eastern sector of the earlier fort. An L-shaped ditch around 20m wide was dug to define the new enclosure, and this retains water in its northern arm. The material excavated from the ditch and from the destruction of the earlier bank was spread over much of the outer bailey to a depth of up to 1.5m. The ditch was recut during extensive renovations carried out during the early 20th century. The first structure to be built in this phase was the gatehouse to the south west which has an arched entrance between twin, semicircular external towers, now ruined. The basement chambers beneath each tower have ashlar-faced walls and barrel-vaulted ceilings, the southern chamber being entered by way of a newel staircase, the northern by a trapdoor. Both were used to house prisoners. Many subsequent alterations included the replacement, during the 15th century, of the wooden bridge over the outer ditch by a stone causeway. The originally embattled curtain wall enclosing the inner bailey was built within the ditch and inner berm around 1250. This survives almost to its full original height and is faced with coursed Greensand ashlar. Three semicircular external towers provided flanking cover from the narrow embrasures which pierce their walls. Each has a narrow staircase to a basement, a branch staircase off it into the ditch and a room and garderobe, or latrine, at ground floor level. Upper rooms were entered by way of the wall walk and were heated by fireplaces. The basement of the northernmost tower has two rib-vaulted bays, the keeled ribs resting on stiff-leaf corbels. The interior castle buildings continued to be built mainly of wood and these will survive in buried form, although the stone foundations of a chapel were exposed during partial excavation of the northern sector of the inner bailey. Around 20m south east of the chapel is a large stone-lined well at least 15.5m deep, and near this is a pile of medieval stone missile-balls, a selection of those recovered from the ditch. These were thrown from trebuchets during the four sieges of the castle. William, Count of Mortain forfeited Pevensey after an unsuccessful rebellion against Henry I in 1101 and the castle, which remained in the royal gift until the later Middle Ages, passed into the hands of the de Aquila family. The most famous siege took place in 1264-65 when the supporters of Henry III, fleeing from their defeat by the Barons at Lewes, took refuge in the castle. In 1372 the castle was given to John of Gaunt, and during his period of office was used to imprison James I, King of Scotland, who had been seized in 1406, and Joan, Queen of Navarre, accused of witchcraft by her stepson, Henry V. By 1300, the sea had gradually begun to recede from around the castle and its military importance declined as a result. Contemporary records show that the castle walls were constantly in need of expensive repair and by the end of the 14th century were not being properly maintained, although the roof leads were kept intact until the middle of the 15th century. By 1500 the castle had ceased to be inhabited and fell rapidly into decay. The threat of the Spanish Armada led to some renewed interest in the defensive value of the site, and a survey of 1587 records that the castle housed two demi-culverins, or heavy guns. These were sited on the contemporary, south east orientated, M-shaped earthen gun emplacement situated in the outer bailey around 90m north east of the main Roman gateway. This takes the form of a raised level platform c.20m long bounded on the seaward side by a slight bank c.0.4m high and around 3m wide. One of the cast iron guns, manufactured in the East Sussex Weald, is now housed within the inner bailey on a modern replica carriage. From the 17th century the castle passed through the hands of various private owners. Valued as a picturesque ruin during the 18th and 19th centuries, it features in many contemporary engravings and illustrations. In 1925 the Duke of Devonshire presented the monument to the state, and extensive repairs began with a view to opening the monument to the public. These were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, when the castle resumed its original military purpose of protecting the south coast. The castle was refortified in May 1940 as an observation and command post. It was continuously occupied by regular troops, including Canadian forces and the United States Army Air Corps, who used it as a radio direction centre, and by the Home Guard until 1944. The World War II defences include two pillboxes and three machine gun posts of concrete faced with rubble and flints, carefully concealed and camouflaged within the earlier Roman and medieval fabric. An internal tower was built just to the south of the Roman east gateway and a blockhouse housing anti-tank weapons was built in front of the main Roman gateway. The blockhouse no longer survives. Modifications carried out to the medieval mural towers included lining the interiors with brick and inserting wooden floors. In 1945 the monument was returned to peaceful use and is now in the guardianship of the Secretary of State and open to the public.
[Historic England]
Apprentices Jacob Hutchings (L) and Craig Bateman from Restaurant Associates (part of Compass Group) arrange canapes before the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg launches 'Made by apprentices' at Admiralty House, 13th March, to showcase the creative talents of apprentices and highlight their contribution to some of the country's most well-respected exports, good and services, #Madebyapprentices, #NAW2013
For more information please contact Emily Shelton 020 3287 4541 emily.shelton@claremont.org.uk or Simon Francis 07738 487259 simon.francis@claremont.org.uk
Picture by Michael Crabtree. mobile +44 7976 251 824 michael@michaelcrabtree.co.uk
Premier Member of Landscape Design Advisor
Mark Scott and his team design some of the most elegant landscapes and homes in Southern California and beyond.
For more on this member, visit us at www.landscape-design-advisor.com and be sure to follow
Premier Member of Landscape Design Advisor
Mark Scott and his team design some of the most elegant landscapes and homes in Southern California and beyond.
For more on this member, visit us at www.landscape-design-advisor.com and be sure to follow
x, x, Roberto Ortega, x, Juan Carlos Jimenez, Ricardo Rodrigues, Gary Hercules
Guilherme Souza, X e Assis Haubert
The Walmart associates from Mexico y Centroamerica arrived in Northwest Arkansas to attend the 2011 Wamart Shareholders' Meeting. To join the conversation visit www.walmartstores.com/shareholdersmeeting
Pulaski Co. Medical Associates
30 Year Awards
3-31-72
Three local doctors were recognized for their many years of serviced to the community by the Medical Auxiliary. Pictured, from left, are Mrs. Morris R.Holtzclaw, Dr. C.R. Faulkner,
Dr. Robert B. Jasper and Dr. Richard Weddle.
(GGG)
Jim Slaughter Photography Collection
The Maya associated the colour red with death and rebirth, and often covered graves and skeletal remains with cinnabar.
Burial sites were oriented to provide access to the next world.
Graves faced north or west, in the directions of the Maya Heavens.
The concept of reincarnation is one strongly mentioned in Mayan belief and religion.
Mayan Representation of Reincarnation
The 'Popol Vuh' gives importance to the 'Maize God', and how the Mayan people themselves descended from 'maize people' created by this god.
In the 'Popol Vuh' that the K'iche' Maya wrote, (one of the few surviving codices), it tells the story of the reincarnation of the Maize God.
In the tale, the Maize God retreats to the underworld, and with the Two Hero Twins, battling the monsters and lords of the place, makes way back to the material world.
He is reborn again, dies, and on and on the cycle continues.
for more information and images go to:
Associate Head Kellogg Community College Baseball Coach Jim Miller. For more information about KCC baseball, visit www.kellogg.edu/baseball.
Underwater Security Associates, Dept of Homeland Security. Seen here in New York, USA. Summer, 2007. Escorting a Fireworks Barge. Copyright Tom Turner
"... black metal could be described as a negative form of environmental writing; the least Apollonian of genres, it is terrestrial – indeed subterranean and infernal – inhabiting a dead forest that is at once both mythic and real unfolding along an atheological horizon that marks the limit of absolute evil where there are no goods or resources to distribute and therefore no means of power and domination, a mastery of nothing."
- Niall Scott & Scott Wilson
I'm finally getting around to reading Hideous Gnosis which was originally a symposium organized by Nicola Masciandaro and sponsored by Glossator and Show No Mercy. Brandon Stosuy gives us - for those unfamiliar with the Black Metal movement - an informal history of the movement in the US in his article for The Believer magazine A Blaze in the North American Sky. He recounts the gruesome murder of Norwegian born Aarseth at the hands Vikernes (a.k.a. Count Grishnackh) which gained the movement its most notorious publicity.
Beyond this dance of death the original inspiration for Black Metal came from the group Venom and its Thrash Metal sounds in which "the main early defining differences between it and its father-genre being tremelo picking and 'blast-beats'; drum beats played about twice the speed as the traditional trash metal base beats (32nds as opposed to 16ths). Taking major influence from Bathory and Venom, the ganre became largely associated with Norway through the work of Mayhem, Burzum and Dark Throne, many of the later bands categorised into the black metal genre being influenced by these three bands, and many of these bands being from Norway themselves.
Characteristics of black metal include typically high-pitched screaming vocals, tremolo picked guitars lacking bass and emphasising treble, and blastbeats (quadruple time drum beats). Unlike its sibling, the more thrash-based death metal, black metal concentrates more on mood and melodies (primal as they may be) instead of riffs and heaviness.
So why would a group of cultural theorists and philosophers want to discuss the dark contours of such a nihilistic subgenre of the Heavy Metal scene as Black Metal? Aspasia Stephanou asks us "Who is the lonely being that utters discordant, pre-linguistic cries amidst a chaotic symphony of sounds?"[1] Varg Vikernes, that most notorious scion of the Black Metal world tells us that early on he was involved in the RPG games of Dungeon and Dragons, but that it was Tolkien's world of Hobbits, Dwarves, and Elves that struck the deepest cord:
"I felt a natural attraction to Sauron, who was the person who gave the world adventure, adversity and challenges in the first place. His One Eye, the One Ring and the tower of Barad-Dur are all attributes similar to those of Óðinn. The One Eye was like Óðinn's eye, the One Ring was like Óðinn's ring, Draupnir ("Dripper"), and Barad-Dur was like the tower or throne of Óðinn, called Hliðskjálf ("Secret Ritual-Site"). His Uruk-Hai and Olog-Hai ("Troll-Race") were like Viking berserkers, the Warges were like Óðinnic werewolves, and so forth. I could easily identify with the fury of the "dark forces", and enjoyed their existence very much because they were making a boring and peaceful world dangerous and exciting."[2]
He has been associated with all forms of the modern pagan movement in its extreme modes of post-nazi philosophical and religious foundations. In the late 90s, "to avoid confusion" and "to find a term more suitable and accurate", Vikernes coined the term "odalism". "In it lies Paganism, traditional nationalism, racialism and environmentalism." Vikernes contrasts it with "modern 'civilization'" which he equates with "capitalism, materialism, Judeo-Christianity, pollution, urbanization, race mixing, Americanization, socialism, globalization, et cetera". He places importance on the fact that Odalism "is not a term tainted by history"; in contrast with Nazism:
The 'nazi ghost' has scared millions of Europeans from caring about their blood and homeland for sixty years now, and it is about time we banish this ghost and again start to think and care about the things that (whether we like it or not) are important to us.[3]
Now the question is: Why have so many people been influenced by such a strange amalgam of religious bigotry and nihilistic ramblings? Or, is it that most Black Metal practitioners have formed another philosophy less racist? In the essay by Benjamin Noys, ‘REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH!’: REMARKS ON THE POLITICS OF BLACK METAL, tells us:
"If we were to define a degree zero of Black Metal politics then it would be an unstable amalgam of Stirnerite egoism and Nietzschean aristocratism: a radical anti-humanist individualism implacably hostile to all the ideological ‘spooks’ of the present social order, committed to creating an ‘aristocracy of the future’ (Nietzsche 464), and auto-engendering a ‘creative nothing’ (Stirner 6)."[ibid. Hideous Gnosis: p. 105]
Noys sees this music as underpinning a return to the 'grand politics' of a Nietzschean "racial-national metaphysics".[ibid. p. 106] Sale Famine of the French Black Metal group Peste Noire becomes the spokesman, or 'organic intellectual' "refuses any notion of the contingency of the link between Black Metal and the extreme right, instead insisting on the necessity of such a link."[ibid. p. 108] He goes on to say, quoting Famine, that Black Metal is, in essence, of the extreme right:
"To my mind, without being necessarily N[ational] S[ocialist], real Black Metal is always extreme right-wing music — be it from Asia or Latin America as extremeright politics are not the appanage of the white race — and it is always Satanic. (Famine, Zero Tolerance)" (ibid. p. 108)
I have to admit, my own left-wing heritage, makes me wonder just what all these cultural theorists and philosophers are up too by forming such a symposium, one that helps promote this music so devoted to the right-wing fascistic ideals of Nazism and Paganistic returns to, what Varg Vigernes, in his own form of it terms 'Odalism' ( sort of amalgam of ancient Norse Odanism and modern fascist ideals)? Noys tells us it seems to be a return to the Chtonian and telluric world view to establish its aesthetic identity:
"Black Metal is the musical memory of our bloodthirsty ancestors of blood, it is the marriage of Tradition, of old racial patrimony with fanaticism, with the rage and the rashness of a youth now lost. It is a CHTONIAN religion: a cult of the EARTH and a return to it, therefore a nationalism; a cult of what is BELOW the earth: Hell — the adjective “chthonian” applies to the Infernal gods as well. Black Metal is a fundamentalism, a music with integrity (from Latin integer, complete) which helps me to remain complete in a dying world, amidst a people in decay, unworthy of its blood. It is the apology of the dark European past. It is a psychosis which helps us to flee a reality we cannot tolerate anymore. (Famine, Zero Tolerance)" (ibid. p. 110-111)
Is this a return to the pre-weimer Germany, of an age of anarchy when the brown shirts ran amok among the population killing and luting, of a world of death portending some grand Götterdämmerung or apocalyptic Ragnarök. Is this the music of the Voluspa,
Old Norse:
Fylliz fiǫrvi
feigra manna,
rýðr ragna siǫt
rauðom dreyra.
Svǫrt verða sólskin
of sumor eptir,
veðr ǫll válynd
Vitoð ér enn, eða hvat?
English:
It sates itself on the life-blood of fated men,
paints red the powers' homes
with crimson gore.
Black become the sun's beams
in the summers that follow,
weathers all treacherous.
Do you still seek to know? And what?
Is this the music of our age, of a time when "greed will cause brothers to kill brothers, and fathers and sons will suffer from the collapse of kinship bonds. ... when the wolf will first swallow the sun, and then his brother the moon, and mankind will consider the occurrence as a great disaster resulting in much ruin. The stars will disappear. The earth and mountains will shake so violently that the trees will come loose from the soil, the mountains will topple, and all restraints will break, causing Fenrir to break free from his bonds."[4]
Noys comments: "The irony is that the aesthetic elements of Black Metal most likely to appeal to the left, or left-leaning, cultural critic – its use of ‘forms which are less conventional’, its evocation of terror or madness – are simply contingent elements that result from the mimetic parsing of the fallen world of modernity which Famine despises." (ibid. p. 113) He goes on to question the writings of Carl Schmitt and his idea of the 'enemy' - ‘The enemy is who defines me. That means in concreto: only my brother can challenge me and only my brother can be my enemy.’ In comment on this statement by Schmitt, Noys says, "the figure of the enemy also has a pacifying function: the construction politics around the friend-enemy distinction is to define ourselves and also to regard our enemy as an enemy, rather than as someone to be exterminated." (ibid. p. 117)
Noys sees this return to a pagan conception of life destructive and that in "the manner of the sorcerer’s apprentice Black Metal unleashes forces it cannot control and which return to destroy itself in an acephalic auto-consumption." (ibid. p. 119) He tells us instead that this cult of the black is a return to what Marx once called 'world-historical necromancy'. (ibid. p. 120) Noys affirms Walter Benjamin's critique of Nazism as ‘habitués of the chthonic forces of terror’ who peddle ‘sinister runic humbug’ ..., correlates with Black Metal’s similar fetishisation of war, radicalised nihilism, and an extreme rightwing politics that articulates itself in modes similar to that of the extreme left (pace Jünger’s ‘national Bolshevism’). (ibid. p. 124) In his summation Noys says,
"The aestheticisation and abstraction of social existence by capitalism in the time of real subsumption is what gives the aesthetic politics of Black Metal its mixture of pathos and bathos. The struggle to pose ‘form-giving power’ against the power of real abstractions creates particular forms of aesthetic politics that cannot simply
be identified with ‘classical’ fascism and Nazism, although, as I have noted, they have new malignant resonances in our global political and economic space that still falls back onto tellurian and nativist re-territorialisations. My point is not a falsely inflationary one, with Black Metal as the viral carrier of a ‘new Fascism’, but neither is it one that stresses dismissive complacency or the ease of extracting from Black Metal a new ‘purified’ and acceptable aesthetic radicalism. Instead, it is to stress the functional coherent incoherence of Black Metal, its constitutive impurity, as its mechanism." (ibid. p. 125)
I decide to focus on the political aesthetics of Black Metal in this first essay to steer the wary reader into the basic foundations upon which this music seems to base its strange dissonance and abject terror. There is another aspect of this music, its mythologies which harp back to the dark forest of ancient Europe, with the tribal howls, screeches, and yells of the Berserkers, those warrior-wolves and assassins full of baying songs of bloodlust and murder. In Aspasia Stephanou's essay PLAYING WOLVES AND RED RIDING HOODS IN BLACK METAL he describes this, quoting Angela Carter, as the "congregation of nightmare", "gothic monsters multiplying and infecting with their contagious proliferations the dark of night." (ibid. p. 159) He goes on to say:
"Black metal glorifies the becoming-werewolf and werewolf nomadism characterised by aggression, speed and violence. The lycanthropic entities that are conjured up in black metal’s lyrics along with the becoming-animal of the voice, demand from the listener a certain kind of response. Between a state of orgasmic pleasure and jouissance emanating from the performative space of radical otherness, and the horrors of hollowing up the body and transgressing its boundaries through the speed of sound, black metal is a monstrous desiring machine. ... It enjoins a bestial annihilation of being and loss of humanity in order to expand the self into a creative multiplicity of wolves. Black metal is becoming wolf, embracing carnal desires, animal transformations and violent instincts." (ibid. p. 159 - 160)
Stephanou even quotes from the "Furturist Manifesto" of Marinetti where he once stated "Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.” In this Black metal misogynistic world he questions the role of female Black metal bands, saying,
"If female black metal bands manipulate the qualities that patriarchy has endowed them with through the use of sexuality in their performances, the language of nihilism or the repetition of black metal’s masculine discourses, then the perpetuation of the similar will persist and their presence will forever be silenced. Black metal is a strange place to be. In a genre in which misanthropy is related to misogyny and in which male authority mostly ignores the feminine presence, black metal’s red riding hoods whether they choose, as the fairy tale says, the path of needles or the path of pins, they must still fight both the father and the wolves to survive in the woods." (ibid. p. 167)
Whatever we might say of Black metal with its proclivities toward a dark paganism and a right-wing aesthetic it seems to be filling some void within the sub world of this dark musical community, and as Scott tells us on the sin-eating mission of these troubadours of blackness, "The Black Metal event is a stranger returning from the void to collect and consume the misery of mankind." (ibid. p. 231) Let us hope that stranger god is not the dark sorcerer of a more terrible abyss of the unreal from which even our own blackest nightmares seem nothing more than the paradisaical glimpse onto a forlorn universe bereft of all things human.
1. Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1, Edited by Nicola Masciandaro (p. 168)
2. Barzum.org A Burzum Story: Part I - The Origin And Meaning
3. Wikipedia article: Varg Vikernes
4. Byock, Jesse (Trans.) (2005). The Prose Edda. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0140447555
earth-wizard.livejournal.com/45007.html
Dark Angel (聖獣伝説ダークエンジェル, Seija densho Dark Angel?, litt. « La légende de la bête sacrée Dark Angel ») est un manga de Kia Asamiya (麻宮 騎亜, Asamiya Kia?). Publié au rythme de douze pages par mois dans le magazine Newtype de la Kadokawa Shoten à partir de 1990, il compte cinq volumes publiés en sept ans. Mais à cause du manque de succès de la série, et des délais de parution trop longs, l'éditeur a finalement arrêté de publier ce manga.
En France, ce manga fut publié par Panini Comics dans la collection Génération Comics dès mai 2000 à un rythme bimestriel.
Synopsis
Après avoir battu en duel son maître, Dark, accompagné de la jeune Kyo, part pour l’Empire du Centre où, comme le veut la tradition, il doit être consacré Gensei de son clan. Un long et dangereux périple devenant une sorte de voyage initiatique qui l’aidera à mieux se connaître lui-même...
Univers
On ne sait pas où se déroule précisément l'histoire de Dark Angel, même si l'on sait que celle-ci se déroule bien dans notre monde, comme le montrent les allusions à la Grèce, à Babylone et aux Mayas. Toutefois, la Grèce se situe en Occident par rapport à cette terre, et l'on peut donc supposer que l'histoire se situe en Asie.
Le pays est divisé en cinq Empires : le nord, l'ouest, le sud, l'est, et le centre. Chacun de ces empires est dirigé par un Gensei. Le Gensei dirige et garantit la protection de son peuple, sur lequel il a le droit de vie et de mort. Ils doivent régulièrement rendre leurs comptes à Lai Haan, souverain de l'Empire du centre.
Dotés de pouvoirs surnaturels, ils peuvent se métamorphoser en fonction de l'animal représentant l'Empire auxquels ils appartiennent. Toutefois, ils ne se servent d'un tel pouvoir qu'en de rares occasions, uniquement en cas de grand danger.
Il existe deux façons de transmettre le titre de Gensei à son successeur : la première consiste à désigner directement le successeur ; la deuxième est lorsqu'un Gensei meurt et qu'il a déjà choisi son successeur, alors l'esprit du défunt et son art accompagnent l'élu dans sa nouvelle mission.
Ils sont assistés dans leur tâche par une Hoosei, un petit esprit féerique d'apparence humaine, mais dont la taille est d'environ vingt centimètres. Entièrement dévoué à son maître, il a pour mission de le protéger et aussi de le soigner à l'aide des quelques pouvoirs magiques dont il dispose. Il est choisi par le chef de l'Empire du Centre, et il remplit sa fonction jusqu'à ce que le Gensei meure ou perde sa position.
Afin de préserver la paix entre les différents Empires, Lai Haan a ordonné un pacte de non-agression qui interdit toute intrusion dans un Empire étranger. De plus, les combats entre Genseis sont eux aussi interdits, et très sévèrement punis.
Personnages
Clan des Suzaku / Clan du Phénix Vermeil (Empire du Sud)
À l'origine, le Gensei de ce clan était Soo, homme bon et charitable qui avait l'estime et la confiance de tous, et il était considéré comme le Gensei le plus puissant des quatre Empires. Cependant, sans que personne le sût, il était atteint d'une grave maladie mortelle, et il s'empressa de choisir celui qui lui succédera au titre de Gensei. Pressentant les aptitudes de Dark, il le recueille alors que ce dernier n'a encore que neuf ans, et l'entraîne intensément pendant cinq ans, jusqu'au jour où celui-ci finit par le surpasser.
Encore jeune et immature, et ayant un sens de l'orientation défaillant, Dark n'est pas encore tout à fait apte à succéder à Soo. Allant même jusqu'à transgresser involontairement les lois et engageant le combat avec la Gensei de l'Empire de l'Est, il se retrouve puni par le chef des Armées de l'Empire du Centre, et se fait confisquer le Sabre Vermeil, symbole même de son titre de Gensei. Son voyage en direction de l'Empire du Centre pour le récupérer et pour confirmer son titre de Gensei est en quelque sorte un périple initiatique qui lui permettra de se former à sa nouvelle tâche.
Kyo, anciennement Hoosei de Soo, qu'elle admirait énormément, a maintenant décidé de se mettre au service de son nouveau maître, Dark. Émotive et effrontée, celle-ci n'arrête pas de le gronder et de le réprimander sans arrêt, mais au fond elle s'inquiète vraiment du sort de Dark, n'hésitant pas une seconde à sacrifier sa vie pour défendre celle de son maître.
Koo et Ryoo font partie de la garde personnelle de Dark. Koo accepte mal que ce dernier ait été élu Gensei des Suzaku et se méfie toujours de lui. C'est un maître dans l'art de manipuler les stylets. Ryoo, chargé lui aussi d'assurer la sécurité de Dark, approuve pleinement le choix de Lord Soo, l'ancien Gensei des Suzaku. Contrairement à Koo, il considère le nouveau Gensei comme quelqu'un de valeur et digne de confiance.
Au cours de son voyage dans l'Empire du Sud, Dark fera la connaissance de Kin, un vieux maître d'armes, qui lui offrira son hospitalité. Après avoir soumis le jeune homme à une épreuve pour juger de sa valeur et de ses intentions pacifiques, il lui donne en récompense Shinrooen, un sabre sans lame, destiné à préserver la paix.
Clan des Seiryuu / Clan du Dragon Bleu (Empire de l'Est)
Son dirigeant Lord Mei désigne Lin comme son successeur direct. Malgré sa gentillesse et son apparente fragilité, les pouvoirs de Lin ont considérablement augmenté quand, après avoir été nommée Gensei, elle est entrée en possession des perles d'eau, de terre, de feu, et de vent, symboles ancestraux de son clan. Toutefois, il lui manque la cinquième perle, la perle d'or, qui a disparu depuis trois générations, et dont les pouvoirs sont tels qu'elle peut ramener un défunt à la vie.
Lin dispose d'une garde personnelle constituée de Shiki, sa Hoosei, ainsi que de Ran et de Chao, deux puissants guerriers qui n'ont de cesse de vouloir la protéger. Chao éprouve une certaine rancune envers Dark, puisqu'il a tué Soo, dont elle était secrètement amoureuse, et qui l'a initiée à l'art du combat. De plus, les Douze Généraux du Dragon se chargent de faire respecter l'ordre dans l'Empire.
Cependant, Lin a une féroce rivale : Nie. Faisant partie des généraux au service du Gensei du Dragon Bleu, elle espérait être élue Gensei mais Lord Mei lui a préféré Lin. Depuis, incapable de comprendre les raisons de son choix, elle voue à cette dernière une haine sans borne et elle a déjà tenté de l'éliminer.
Clan des Byakko / Clan du Tigre Blanc (Empire de l'Ouest)
Lord Tan était le Gensei du clan du Tigre Blanc jusqu'à ce que sa compagne, Susa, se fasse enlever par les Gairana, une tribu nomade de bandits, et il décide alors d'abandonner son titre pour partir à sa recherche. Il désigne donc Shoo pour reprendre en main la direction de son clan.
Shoo est cependant loin d'être un chef honorable : barbare et tyrannique, il aime faire couler le sang, et entretient un règne de terreur parmi ses sujets, pour lesquels il n'a aucune estime. Bafouant sans scrupule les lois imposées par Lai Haan, celui-ci n'en fait toujours qu'à sa tête, il adore combattre et considérant Dark comme un adversaire digne de lui, il ira même jusqu'à le défier.
Bee, sa maligne Hoosei, était l'amie de Kyo jusqu'à ce qu'elle tienne cette dernière pour responsable de la mort de son frère. Depuis, elle ne peut s'empêcher d'éprouver une profonde amertume pour elle. Elle est entièrement dévouée à Shoo et l'accompagne partout.
Deux de ses plus proches subordonnés sont Soo et Sei. Soo, comme la plupart des membres de son clan, a pour points forts une rapidité hors pair et l'instinct de chasseur propre aux félins. Ayant échoué dans la mission que lui avait confié Lord Shoo visant à éliminer Goo, un Genra qui se serait rebellé contre son autorité, il s'en voit sévèrement puni. Sei, quant à elle, est une jeune femme mystérieuse, qui semble avoir un étrange pouvoir de domination sur Shoo.
Clan des Genbu / Clan de la Tortue de Jade (Empire du Nord)
Le clan des Genbu est dirigé par En, homme sage mais rusé, qui aime se mêler des affaires des autres Empires. Sa Hoosei, Setsuka, malgré son apparence frêle, dispose d'un redoutable potentiel, lui permettant de rivaliser sans difficulté avec un ennemi bien plus grand qu'elle. En plus de sa force, sa détermination et sa volonté font d'elle une alliée de choix. En dispose également d'une armée à son service, les sept Hokuteki, ou étoiles de la Grande Ourse. À la différence des Genra, lorsque ceux-ci se transforment, plutôt que de se métamorphoser en animaux, il revêtent une armure qui les protège entièrement.
Empire du Centre
On ignore beaucoup sur cet Empire, entouré par les quatre autres Empires, d'où son nom. Son chef, Lai Haan, dispose d'une autorité sur les quatre autres Genseis, puisque même Shoo le redoute. Pan Garuda, le commandant en chef de l'Armée de l'Empire du Centre, semble lui aussi avoir autorité sur eux, puisqu'il se permet de punir Lin et Dark.
Sayan
Sayan est une jeune fille que Dark rencontre en rêve. Partagée tout d'abord entre l'attitude douce et paisible de Dark et son profil de guerrier, elle finit par se lier d'amitié à lui. Elle vient d'une époque future, puisque les avions et les chars d'assaut existent dans son "monde".
Spectres grecs
On ne sait pas grand chose de la Grèce et de ses spectres grecs, si ce n'est qu'ils sont avides de combats. Au cours de l'un de ses voyages, Lin rencontrera Delpyune, un de ces spectres qui est en réalité un être hybride moitié femme moitié serpent, qui tentera de la tuer, au nom de son maître, Lord Tyupon.
Gairanas
Les Gairanas sont un clan nomade de bandits androïdes. Ils sont créés au sein de l'empire mécanique de Jipang, une petite île déserte dénuée de toute ressource naturelle, mais qui possède un énorme agglomérat mécanique fondé par la seule personne qui y vit, Kyubi. Ceux-ci excellent par leurs aptitudes au combat, et aiment défier d'autres guerriers dans leur arène de combat, qui est en fait un Colisée monté sur une tortue géante. Cependant, beaucoup de leurs origines restent un mystère.
Staff
Scénario et dessin : Kia Asamiya
Rédaction : Shinobu Kuwahara - Shin'ichiro Inoue - Osamu Ōta
Design : Tetsuya Asakura
Couleurs : Kumiko Nakayama
Conception graphiques titres : Tetsuya Asakura
Production : Michitaka Kikuchi
Consultant spécial : Michitaka Kikuchi
Assistant-dessinateur en chef : Shinobu Abebe
Assistants-dessinateurs réguliers : Hirotaka Ōkuma - Takashi Sakai - Tsutomu Isomata - Yuji Komatsu - Yoshiaki Nakahama - Takako Ishida
Assistants-dessinateurs exceptionnels : Mitsuhiro Moriyama - Kenji Nitta - Hiroki Saito - Yuitaka Karyu - Naoki Mochitzuki - Yūki Sasaki - Yuji Ushida - Takeshi Okazaki
Édition française
Notes sur l'édition française
Dark Angel est le tout premier manga publié sous le label Génération Comics de l'éditeur Panini Comics.
Plusieurs illustrations en couleur sont présentes au début de chaque volume.
Un court récit de l'auteur réalisé trois ans et demi avant la publication de Dark Angel intitulé Les origines, et qui est en quelque sorte un pilote du manga, a été ajouté à la fin du premier volume.
Le cinquième et dernier volume fut vendu avec un coffret de rangement pour ranger les quatre premiers volumes.
La série est actuellement en rupture de stock chez l'éditeur, et aucune date de réédition n'a été annoncée.
Équipe de traduction
Traduction : DéFi
Lettrage : Luca Poli
Supervision : Nicole Duclos
ISBN et dates de sortie
Volume 1 : (ISBN 2-84538-016-X) - Mai 2000
Volume 2 : (ISBN 2-84538-018-6) - Juillet 2000
Volume 3 : (ISBN 2-84538-019-4) - Septembre 2000
Volume 4 : (ISBN 2-84538-024-0) - Novembre 2000
Volume 5 : (ISBN 2-84538-026-7) - Janvier 2001
Adaptation
Après Dark Angel, Kia Asamiya décide de mettre en scène le héros dans une nouvelle adaptation de son œuvre : Dark Angel : Phoenix Résurrection (Dark Angel : La résurrection du Phénix).
N'ayant pu trouver d'éditeur japonais acceptant de continuer à publier la suite de Dark Angel, Kia Asamiya se tourne vers les États-Unis, où il trouvera finalement ce qu'il cherchait. Il change donc totalement de support, et Dark Angel devient un comic entièrement en couleurs. Il choisit de reprendre sa série depuis le début : la trame de base est la même, mais des changements au niveau du design des personnages, de la vitesse de l'histoire, du ton de la narration, apparaissent. Cependant, l'auteur abandonne bien vite le projet, puisque après le premier volume paru en 1999, il n'y a plus eu aucune nouvelle rapportée à ce sujet. L'auteur aurait en effet entrepris de travailler sur d'autres choses.
Génération Comics a quand même décidé de publier ce volume, et l'ouvrage paraît en 2001 en France.
Artbook
Un artbook de la série intitulé Dark Angel Illustration Book est sorti au Japon, édité en France par Génération Comics en 2002.
Les illustrations de Dark Angel présentées dans ce recueil ont toutes été publiées dans le magazine Newtype. Chaque double-page présente une illustration et un commentaire d'Asamiya ainsi que les différents éléments ayant servi à la conception de l'image. Une grande place est laissée aux personnages secondaires (on trouve quelques personnages qui ne sont pas apparus dans le manga). À la fin de l'ouvrage, l'auteur dresse même un tableau détaillé des étapes de la conception d'une illustration.
Gingee Fort or Senji Fort (also known as Chenji, Jinji or Senchi) in Tamil Nadu, India is one of the surviving forts in Tamil Nadu, India. It lies in Villupuram District, 160 kilometres from the state capital, Chennai, and is close to the Union Territory of Puducherry. The fort is so fortified, that Shivaji, the Maratha king, ranked it as the "most impregnable fortress in India" and it was called the "Troy of the East" by the British. The nearest town with a railway station is Tindivanam and the nearest airport is Chennai (Madras), located 150 kilometres away.
Originally the site of a small fort built by the Chola dynasty during the 9th century AD, Gingee Fort was modified by Kurumbar during the 13th century. As per one account, the fort was built duirng the 15–16th century by the Nayaks, the lietunants of the Vijayanagara Empire and who later became independent kings. The fort passed to the Marathas under the leadership of Shivaji in 1677 AD, Bijapur sultans, the Moghuls, Carnatic Nawabs, French and the British in 1761. The fort is closely associated with Raja Tej Singh, who unsuccessfully revolted against the Nawab of Arcot and eventually lost his life in a battle.
The Gingee Fort complex is on three hillocks: Krishnagiri to the north, Rajagiri to the west and Chandrayandurg to the southeast. The three hills together constitute a fort complex, each having a separate and self-contained citadel. The fort walls are 13 km and the three hills are connected by walls enclosing an area of 11 square kilometres. It was built at a height of 240 m and protected by a 24 m wide moat. The complex has a seven-storeyed Kalyana Mahal (marriage hall), granaries, prison cells, and a temple dedicated to its presiding Hindu goddess called Chenjiamman. The fortifications contain a sacred pond known as Aanaikulam. On the top of the hillock, there are minor fortifications. The fort, in modern times, is maintained and administered by the Archaeological Survey of India. The fort is one of the prominent tourist destinations in Villupuram district.
LEGEND AND ETYMOLOGY
The Bijapur Nawabs who held the fort from about 1660 to 1677 AD called it Badshabad, while the Marathas who succeeded them called it Chandry or Chindy. The Mughals, on their capture of the fort in 1698 A.D., named it Nusratgadh in honour of Nawab Zulfiqar Khan Nusrat-Jang, the commander-in-chief of the besieging army. Later, the English and the French called it Gingee or Jinji. The early Madras records of the English give the spelling Chingee or Chengey.As per Tamil legend, the tragic tale of Raja Tej Singh, popularly known in Tamil as Thesingu Raasan, is associated with the fort. The true life story of Tej Singh and his general, Mehboob Khan (aka Maavuthukaran), who were friends, has inspired many poems, street plays, and countless other stories. He was the son of Swarup Singh and revolted against the Nawab of Arcot, and was defeated and killed in the war that followed. Though Gingee became a part of the Nawab's territory in 1714, the young and courageous Tej Singh became a legend and his life, love and brave but tragic end were eulogised in various ballads.
HISTORY
The main source for the first two hundred years of the history of the place is the "Complete History of the Carnatic Kings" among the Mackenzie manuscripts. According to historian Narayan, a small village called Melacerri, located 4.8 km away from Gingee is called "Old Gingee" has traces of fortifications from about 1200 AD. Ananda Kon of the shepherd community (Konar), accidentally found a treasure in one of the cavities of the Western hill while grazing his sheep. Making himself the head of a small band of warriors, he defeated the petty rulers of the neighbouring villages and built a small fortress on Kamalagiri, which he renamed Anandagiri after himself. The Konar dynasty ruled Gingee from 1190 to 1330 AD, and was succeeded by the chief of a neighbouring place called Kobilingan, who belonged to the Kurumba caste and ascended the throne of Gingee. He was a feudatory of the powerful Cholas. Gingee came into the hands of various ruling dynasties of South India, starting from the Cholas.
Originally the site of a small fort built by the Chola dynasty during the 9th century AD, Gingee Fort was modified by Kurumbar while fighting the Cholas and again by the Vijayanagar empire during the 13th century. As per one account, the fort was built duirng the 15-16th century by the Gingee Nayaks, the lietunants of the Vijayanagara Empire and who later became independent kings. The fort was built at a strategic place to fend off any invading armies. It was further strengthened by the Marathas under the leadership of Shivaji in 1677 AD. He recaptured it from the Bijapur sultans who had originally taken control of the fort from the Marathas. During Aurangzeb's campaign in the Deccan, Shivaji's second son who had assumed the throne, Chhatrapati Rajaram, escaped to Ginjee and continued the fight with Moghuls from Ginjee. The fort was the seat of the Maratha Empire for a few months. The Moghuls could not capture the fort for seven years in spite of laying siege. The fort was finally captured in 1698, but not before Chhatrapati Rajaram escaped. It was later passed on to the Carnatic Nawabs who lost it to the French in 1750 before the British finally took control in 1761 despite losing it to Hyder Ali for a brief period. Raja Desinghu ruled Chenji during the 18th century.
ARCHITECTURE
The Gingee Fort complex is on three hillocks: Krishnagiri to the north, Rajagiri to the west and Chandrayandurg to the southeast. The three hills together constitute a fort complex, yet each hill contains a separate and self-contained citadel. Connecting them - forming an enormous triangle, a mile from north to south, punctuated by bastions and gateways giving access to the protected zones at the heart of the complex. The fort walls are 13 km and the three hills are connected by walls enclosing an area of 11 square kilometres. It was built at a height of 240 m and protected by a 24 m wide moat. It has a seven-storeyed Kalyana Mahal (marriage hall), granaries, prison cells, and a temple dedicated to its presiding Hindu goddess called Chenjiamman. The fortifications contain a sacred pond known as Aanaikulam. The walls of the fort are a mixture of the natural hilly terrain comprising the Krishnagiri, Chakkilidrug and Rajagiri hills, while the gaps were sealed with the main wall that measures 20 metres in thickness. On the top of the hillock, there are minor fortifications.
Water resources are usually sparse in South Indian forts, while it was well managed in the Citadel. There are two sweet water sources on the summit and below it there are three reservoirs for storage of rain water. Water for Kalyana Mahal was brought through earthenware pipes from reservoir located 500 m from it.
RAJAGIRI
The first hill, where the main fort is, is called Rajagiri. Originally it was known as Kamalagiri as well as Anandagiri. The fort was historically considered most impregnable. It is about 240 m in height. Its summit is cut off from communication and is surrounded by a deep, natural chasm that is about 9.1 m wide and 18 m deep. To gain entry into the citadel one had to cross the chasm with the help of a small wooden draw bridge. The naturally strong rock where the fortress is located, is further strengthened by the construction of embrasure walls and gateways along all possible shelves and precipitous edges. The citadel is reached by traversing through seven gates. This citadel contains important buildings apart from the living quarters of the royalty, like the stables, granaries, and meeting halls for the public, temples, mosques, shrines and pavilions. Kamalakanni Amman temple is present atop the Rajagiri hills. As per Hindu legend, the presiding deity, Kamalakanni, is believed to be the widow of demon king Acalamaccuran. Draupadi, a Hindu goddess, beheaded the hundred heads of the demon and Kamalakanni is believed to have protests that she would become a widow. Draupadi explains her similarities that she has no sexual relations, though married. This resulted in the ambiguous kanni suffix. Ranganathar Temple, bell tower, watch tower, cannon and draw bridge are located atop the hill.
The lower fort consists of Arcot Gate, Pondicherry Gate, which was probably improved by the French during their occupation (1751–1761), the Prison on top of Pondicherry Gate, Royal Battery, Venkataramanaswami Temple, Pattabhi Ramaswami Temple, Sadatulla Khan’s mosque, Chettikulam and Chakrakulam tanks, platform where Raja Desing was killed in a war, large stone image of Hanuman, prisoner’s well where the prisoners condemned to death were thrown and left to die of starvation. The inner fort consists of Kalyana Mahal, the royal stables, the ruined royal palace, Anaikulam tank, granaries, magazine and the shrine of Venugopalaswami. There is a site museum at the entrance of the fort set up by the Archeological Survey of India containing sculptures pertaining to periods and many dynasties that ruled Gingee. There are also guns and cannonballs made of stone, strewn about the fort.
KRISHNAGIRI
The second important hillock with an imposing citadel is known as Krishnagiri. It is also known as the English Mountain, perhaps because the British residents occupied the fort here, for some time. The Krishnagiri fort lies to the North of Tiruvannamalai road. It is smaller in size and height compared to the Rajagiri fort. A flight of steps of granite stones leads to its top. Another fort connected with Rajagiri with a low rocky ridge is called Chandrayan Durg, Chandragiri or St. George’s Mountain. The military and strategic value of this fort has been relatively less, but it has some interesting buildings of later period.
CHAKKILIYA DURG
The third fort for some reason is called Chakkiliya Durg or Chamar Tikri — meaning the fort of the cobblers. It is not known why it had acquired the name. Probably the royal saddlers and military shoemakers had set up their workshops here, as Gingee obviously was a military encampment. There is a smaller and less important fourth hill, the summit of which is also well fortified. There is nothing much left of Chandrayan Durg and Chakkilli Durg. Their flanks are now completely covered with thorny shrubs and stone pieces.
CULTURE
After the fort passed into British hands, it did not see any further action. The fort at Gingee was declared a National Monument in 1921 and was under the Archeological Department. The Tourism Department of India has tried to popularise this remote and oft-forgotten fort. Gingee today, with its ruined forts, temples and granaries, presents a different picture from the glorious splendor of its bygone days. But the remains of that glorious past speak volumes about the numerous invasions, warfare and bravery that it witnessed. The fort is maintained by the Archeological Department. An entry charge of ₹5 is charged for Indian citizens and SAARC countries and US$2 or ₹100 for all monuments inside Krishnagiri and Rajagiri forts.
WIKIPEDIA
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Republic of Texas, 1839-40, 1842-45; district judge, state of Texas, 1846-50. Mills County, Texas was named in his honor. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, Nov. 12, 1817; died Nov. 30, 1871. Octavia (Jones) Adair-Mills, widow of William A. Adair, and of John T. Mills. Died Nov. 20, 1890.
Oliver Cann, Director, Media Relations, World Economic Forum, Imad Elhajj, Associate Professor, American University of Beirut, Lebanon; Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence & Robotics and Anil Menon, President, Smart+Connected Communities and Deputy Chief
•Globalization Officer, Cisco Systems (India), India; Global Agenda Council on The Future of Smart Cities
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The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provides
"Cassel, Sir Ernest Joseph (1852–1921), merchant banker and financier, was born on 3 March 1852 in Cologne, Germany, the youngest of the three children of Jacob Cassel (1802–1875) and Amalia, née Rosenheim (d. 1874). Jacob Cassel had a small banking business, founded by his father, Moses Cassel, which provided a modest but comfortable income. Since at least the late seventeenth century the Cassels had been active in financial affairs in the Rhineland; several of them were advisers or agents for the prince electors. Ernest had a brother, Max Cassel, born in 1848, who died in 1875, and a sister, Wilhelmina Cassel (later Schoenbrunn), to whom he remained close and who managed his household in England in later years. In later life Cassel gave entirely conflicting accounts of the atmosphere of his early home life and the truth is difficult to establish.
Ernest was educated in Cologne until the age of fourteen, when he started work with the banking firm of Eltzbacher. In 1869 he emigrated to Liverpool, where he is said to have arrived with a bag of clothes and a violin, and no evident promise of a job. He soon started work with a firm of German grain-merchants in Liverpool, but a little over a year later he moved to a clerkship with the Anglo-Egyptian Bank in Paris. The outbreak shortly afterwards of the Franco-Prussian War forced him, as a German subject, to return to England, this time to a clerkship at the London merchant bank, Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt, where he was closely associated with Henri Bischoffsheim. This move was probably facilitated by an introduction from the powerful but mysterious European financier Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Cassel was linked with the independent and enterprising businessman until the latter's death in 1896, and he may have modelled his career on Hirsch's.
Early career and marriage
Within a year Cassel, aged only nineteen, had demonstrated his flair by rapidly saving the affairs of a Jewish firm in Constantinople in which Bischoffsheims had an interest. In 1874 he was appointed manager, at an unusually early age, at a salary said to have been £5000 a year, following a series of further highly successful negotiations, especially in connection with South American loans. In addition to his salary he obtained substantial commission from the rescue or liquidation of troublesome ventures on Bischoffsheims' behalf. Such activities gained for him international contacts through whom he became profitably involved on his own account in American and other overseas enterprises. When his father died in 1875, leaving Ernest a half share with his sister of RM 91,286 (£4500), Cassel could afford to settle more than his own half (£3000) upon his sister, who was now divorced, and her two children. When he married in 1878 he was able to put aside capital of £150,000.
In 1878 Cassel married Annette (d. 1881), daughter of Robert Thompson Maxwell, of Croft House, Croft, Darlington, and on the day of his marriage he became a naturalized British subject. His wife died of tuberculosis three years later, to his great grief. They had one daughter, Maud. Mrs Cassel had been converted to Roman Catholicism and by her wish Cassel, never devoutly Jewish, was received into the Roman Catholic church shortly after her death. His devotion to his new religion was never very evident, nor was his conversion widely known until, at his appointment to the privy council in 1902 he chose, to general surprise, to be sworn in on the Catholic Bible. He never remarried and is not known to have had any intimate relationships for the remainder of his life. He was known as a warm and sociable man, devoted to his daughter and to what remained of his family, and he sustained a number of close and lasting friendships. Margot Asquith described him as ‘a man of natural authority … dignified, autocratic and wise; with a power of loving those he cared for’. She added that ‘he had no small talk and disliked gossip’ (Adler, 328). Others who knew him less well described him as kind but cold. He was a very private man who left no intimate record of his life or feelings and destroyed most of his personal papers. After his wife's death his sister and her children, Anna (later Anna Jenkins) and Felix (later knighted, and a prominent barrister and Conservative assistant attorney-general) moved to live with him, and they adopted the name Cassel. First Wilhelmina and then Anna acted as his official hostesses.
Expansion of financial affairs
Thereafter Cassel's main preoccupations, other than his family, were with international finance and entry into high society. He increased his fortune vastly and rapidly through investment in the mining, transportation, and processing of Swedish iron ore (he was responsible for introducing the Gilchrist–Thomas processing technique into Sweden) and in the rapidly expanding American railways. In the early 1880s his association with Bischoffsheims was on a profit-sharing rather than a salaried basis, but he never formally became a partner. In 1884 he left the firm, though he continued to occupy part of their offices until 1898 while working on his own account. He did not join another finance house until 1910, preferring to work independently or to associate in consortia with other financiers for specific projects.
International finance in the fast-growing international economy of the late nineteenth century was risky, requiring a cool head, good contacts, and a shrewd capacity to keep on good terms with powerful people in many countries. At this Cassel was adept. He was known for the sharpness of his dealing and he aroused considerable suspicion, antagonism, and jealousy, though no proof of actual dishonesty was ever disclosed. His great wealth endowed him with a useful capacity for flexibility in his dealings when necessary. In Sweden, for example, he countered the hostility of influential men to the degree of economic power he wielded by allowing Swedish representatives to dominate the board of his company (the Grangesborg-Oxelsund Traffic Company Ltd) and by selling many of its fast-rising shares to Swedish bankers, politicians, and journalists at below the market price, though still at considerable profit. His enemies referred to these tactics as ‘Cassel's greasing system’ (Grunwald, 131). He played an important role in the economic development of Sweden.
At least as important in determining Cassel's great success as any dubious dealing in Sweden and elsewhere was his immense, unremitting capacity for hard work. He was constantly in touch with a multitude of simultaneous transactions, delegating effectively yet never losing control, always available for the key meeting or decision, yet rarely working from his office, constantly travelling among business locations or entertaining contacts. He never neglected to keep in contact with the world of influence wherever it was to be found, whether at the card table, the dinner table, or at Cowes. Also important was his capacity to choose shrewd people to assist him with his affairs or to run specific projects. From 1902 he employed the influential Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher, who was succeeded in 1904 by Sir Sidney Peel. He appointed the talented former public servant Sir Henry Babington-Smith to head the National Bank of Turkey in 1909. They remained close friends and associates and Babington-Smith was an executor of Cassel's will. But the essential ingredients of Cassel's success were his own keen observation and judgement of international and financial affairs, which drew on information from his huge range of contacts worldwide.
From his earliest days with Bischoffsheims, Cassel had been profitably involved with American enterprises, notably the disentanglement of the affairs of the New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Railway. In the course of such activities he had become a close and lasting friend of Jacob H. Schiff of the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., through whom he became profitably interested on his own account in other American enterprises. One of his first operations after becoming independent of Bischoffsheims was the reorganization of the Louisville and Nashville Railway, which he carried through in conjunction with Kuhn, Loeb and with Wertheim and Gompertz of Amsterdam.
From the late 1880s Cassel's interests expanded into South America. He arranged the finances of the Mexican Central Railway for some time and in 1893 he issued the Mexican government's 6 per cent loan. In 1896 he issued the Uruguay government's 5 per cent loan. To a lesser extent he was also active in China, still concentrating on transport and mining, and also in 1895 issuing a 6 per cent government loan. Between 1890 and 1910 he was also involved in arranging loans for Japan, Egypt, Turkey, and Russia. He took relatively little interest in domestic investment, though he did play a part in financing the building of the London underground from 1894, through participation in the Electric Traction Company. However, this did not prove to be a profitable investment. From 1897 Cassel began a long and more rewarding association with Vickers, Sons & Co., the shipbuilding and armaments firm. He organized their purchase of the Barrow Naval and Shipbuilding Construction Company and of the Maxim Gun and Nordenfelt companies. For some years he underwrote the financial issues for Vickers and its subsidiaries.
Cassel was an early investor in gold and diamond mining in South Africa, and this was an important source of his increasing fortune in the 1890s and 1900s. In 1897 he agreed to finance the Aswan Dam and Asyut barrage on the upper Nile, another successful intervention in an underdeveloped economy. He later moved, also profitably, into financing the development of sugar production and marketing (through the Daira Sanieh Company) and also of railways in Egypt. In 1898 he established the National Bank of Egypt and the Agricultural Bank of Egypt, which played an especially important role in financing agricultural development. So also did the Société Anonyme de Wadi Kom Ombo, which he played a leading role in establishing for the purpose of irrigating the great desert plain from the Nile to Gebel es Silsila. A similar attempt to stimulate the economic development of Morocco by establishing the State Bank of Morocco, which Cassel reluctantly undertook in 1906 at the urging of the British and French governments, was less successful. The National Bank of Turkey, which he established in association with other London bankers at the urging of the Turkish government in 1909 with the aim of expanding British commercial and financial involvement in Turkey (in particular for the development of mineral resources), was also unsuccessful. It proved impossible to defeat the strength of French financial and commercial interests in Turkey.
Characteristically Cassel calmed the potential for opposition in Egypt by winning the friendship of the khedive of Egypt. He arranged for him to meet Cassel's other good friend, King Edward VII, in 1903 and in 1904, and he made him a loan of £500,000 at the low rate of 2.5 per cent, in return for commercial and land concessions. This infuriated the consul-general, Lord Cromer, who had encouraged Cassel's initial ventures in Egypt as a means of increasing British influence, but who had the thankless task of attempting to curb the khedive's expenditure. In 1903 Cassel also donated £341,000 to equip and operate travelling eye hospitals in Egypt. This may have been motivated by a desire to mollify opposition. His motives were probably mixed, as he also gave generously to philanthropic causes in Britain. Whatever the motive, the outcome was a major contribution to combating the ravages of eye diseases such as trachoma in poverty-stricken rural Egypt.
Cassel was suspected of demanding honours in return for services to governments and this was a persistent theme in London society gossip of the time. There is certainly an interesting congruence between his progress through the honours lists of the world and his financial services. He became KCMG in 1899, following his major Egyptian deals, and was sworn of the privy council in 1902, after the accession of Edward VII. He had been the friend and companion of the prince of Wales at racing and cards, and as Edward's financial adviser (in succession to Hirsch) he was reputed to be responsible for the surprising fact that Edward ascended the throne free from debt. He became a commander of the Légion d'honneur and received the British GCVO in 1906, following the establishment of the State Bank of Morocco. He was made GCB in 1909, following his agreement to a Foreign Office request to put a further £500,000 into the ailing Bank of Morocco. His collection of decorations, of which he was immensely proud, came to include: commander, first class, of the royal order of Vasa, Sweden (1900); the grand cordon of the Imperial Ottoman order of the Osmanieh, conferred by the khedive in 1903; the crown of Prussia, first class (1908); the grand cross of the Polar Star, Sweden (1909); the order of the Rising Sun, first class, Japan (1911); and the Red Eagle of Prussia, first class, with brilliants (1913).
High society, politics, and philanthropy
Cassel penetrated the élite with the same determination and with some of the same methods by which he achieved business success. From the time of his marriage he cultivated, at a succession of rented and, later, personally owned country houses, the social and political élites—on the hunting field, with the shooting party, at the racecourse, and at the card table. By the 1890s he was an accepted house-guest of the Devonshires at Chatsworth. He took up hunting despite a certain dislike of horses and his incompetence at riding them. He started to own and breed racehorses in 1889, and continued until 1894 in company with Lord Willoughby de Broke, and thereafter alone. Among the chief stallions owned by him were Cylgad and Hapsburg; among his mares were Gadfly, Sonatura, and Doctrine. He had some successes on the course, though the nearest he came to winning the Derby was to come second with Hapsburg in 1914. It took him thirteen years to achieve election to the Jockey Club, in 1908. The patronage of Edward VII enabled his entry to circles otherwise closed to a largely self-made German Jew, but it could not win him entire acceptance.
Some prominent politicians were more welcoming to Cassel. Both Randolph and Winston Churchill were his good friends, as were the Asquiths. Cassel's own politics appear to have been Conservative, but he was never active in the political world. Like other prominent financiers his advice was sought on financial matters by politicians of both parties and by civil servants. He was described in 1903 by Sir Edward Hamilton, joint permanent secretary at the Treasury, as ‘one of the representative men—Natty Rothschild, John (Lord) Revelstoke (the head of Barings) and Cassel, whom I now regard as my first counsellors’ (Hamilton diaries, BL, Add. MS 48658, 16 Nov 1903). Cassel was consulted by Sir Michael Hicks Beach and by Asquith when they were chancellors of the exchequer. Lloyd George dined with him while he held the office but was more reserved. A certain aloofness towards party politics was one of the keys to Cassel's business success; in 1909, at the height of the budget crisis, when the City was organizing against Lloyd George's proposed taxes, Cassel wrote to his son-in-law, Wilfred Ashley, stressing his ‘absolute loyalty to whatever government I happen to be serving, and if whoever happened to be in power could not be certain of this he would not give me, and I certainly would not wish, his confidence’ (Cassel to Ashley, 18 Aug 1909, Broadlands Archive, Cassel MS, folder X6). He did not sign the City's anti-budget petition, though he did cautiously arrange to shift funds to the United States to avoid the new taxes. He was an early, though anonymous, contributor to the Tariff Reform League. Also in the 1900s he opposed the City's Jewish-led boycott of Russian finance in retaliation for the persecution of the Jews. He argued that negotiation and alliance with Russia were more likely to mute their antisemitism than was a boycott.
Especially in his earlier years Cassel mixed widely in theatrical and artistic circles. Alma-Tadema and Burne-Jones were both grateful for his friendship and patronage. He amassed an impressive collection of old masters, including important works by Van Dyck, Franz Hals, Romney, Raeburn, Reynolds, and Murillo, and he acquired French and English furniture, Renaissance bronzes, Dresden china, Chinese jade, and old English silver. He gave away at least £2 million in charitable donations, including £200,000 in 1902 for the founding of the King Edward VII Sanatorium for Consumption at Fenhurst, near Midhurst, with a further £20,000 in 1913; £10,000 in 1907 to the Imperial College of Science and Technology; in 1909 a half share of £46,000 with Lord Iveagh for founding the Radium Institute; £210,000 in 1911 for setting up the King Edward VII British–German Foundation for the aid of distressed people in Germany; £30,000 for distressed workers in Swedish mines; £50,000 to Hampshire hospitals in memory of his daughter; in 1913 £10,000 to Egyptian hospitals; and £50,000 for the sick and needy of Cologne.
Despite his formal conversion to Roman Catholicism, Cassel still regarded himself as Jewish and devoted a considerable amount of money and effort to the international attempts of wealthy Jews to acquire a national home for Jews fleeing from Russia, a movement in which Hirsch had been prominent. During the First World War, Cassel gave at least £400,000 for medical services and the relief of servicemen's families. In 1919 he donated £500,000 for an educational trust fund which was used to establish a faculty of commerce at the London School of Economics, to support the Workers' Educational Association, to finance scholarships for the technical and commercial education of working men, to promote the study of foreign languages by the establishment of professorships, lectureships, and scholarships, and finally to support the higher education of women. He gave £212,000 for the founding of a hospital at Penhurst, Kent, for functional nervous disorders.
Personal grief, winding down, and death
In 1910–11 Cassel came to a turning point in his life, for a mixture of personal and political reasons. He felt great personal grief at the death of Edward VII, as well as losing much of his social and political influence, to the undisguised and often openly antisemitic glee of certain members of high society. The friendship between Edward and ‘Windsor-Cassel’ was close and strong. The two had met at the racecourse about 1896, possibly introduced by Hirsch, and were friends thereafter. They even looked somewhat alike: substantially built, bearded, and moustached in similar style.
Equally tragically, in 1911 his only daughter died after a long battle with tuberculosis. Cassel devoted much care to her in her last year. In 1901 she had married Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfred Ashley, grandson of the great earl of Shaftesbury and great-grandson of Lady Palmerston, through whom he had inherited Broadlands House in Hampshire. Ashley had been Conservative MP for Blackpool since 1906; he served as minister of transport in 1924–9, and was created Baron Mount Temple of Lee in 1932. He was on friendly terms with Cassel, who provided him with financial advice. After his daughter's death Cassel's affection centred upon his two granddaughters, especially the elder, Edwina.
Having decided to reduce the volume of his activity, in 1910 Cassel became a partner in the merchant bank of S. Japhet & Co., but he kept up independent interests and an office close to his sumptuous new home, Brook House in Park Lane. He had previously lived at 48 Grosvenor Square. Brook House had six marble-lined kitchens; an oak-panelled dining room, designed to seat one hundred in comfort; and the entrance hall was panelled in lapis lazuli alternating with green-veined cream-coloured marble and was described as the ‘giant's lavatory’ by Edwina's friends. Until his death Cassel lived there much of the time. He also had a flat in Paris, a Swiss villa (Villa Cassel, at Riederfurk, in the canton of Valais), another villa in the south of France, a stud farm at Moulton Paddocks, Newmarket, bought in 1899, and three country houses bought between 1912 and 1917. These were the Six Mile Bottom estate, Cambridgeshire, purchased in 1912; Branksome Dene, Bournemouth, bought in 1913; and Upper Hare Park, Cambridgeshire, which he acquired in 1917.
The more general curtailment of Cassel's activities may have been due to anticipation of that great disrupter of international finance, a major war. Certainly his personal investments were safely concentrated in North America by 1914. He was strongly aware of the danger of war with Germany as early as 1908. Between 1908 and 1912 he and the German shipowner Alfred Ballin made secret efforts to bring together German and British political leaders to try to avert conflict. When war came he made one of the largest contributions to the war loan and was a member of the Anglo-French financial mission to the USA in 1915, which resulted in a large American loan. Such activities did not prevent Cassel from suffering constant attack in Britain for his German birth, including an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from the privy council.
Thereafter Cassel confined his attention to a limited amount of American business and to racing and shooting parties with old friends, and he was cared for by Edwina. He died on 21 September 1921, sitting at his desk at Brook House, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery, London, according to Roman Catholic rites. Shortly afterwards Edwina married Lord Louis Mountbatten (Earl Mountbatten of Burma), bringing Broadlands House, which she inherited, into the Mountbatten family. Cassel left an estate worth £7,333,411 gross (with a probate value of £6 million), most of it to his immediate family. He left small items from his art, china, and jade collections to a list of old and valued friends who included the Asquiths, Mr and Mrs Winston Churchill, Lord Birkenhead, Mrs Keppel, Lord Revelstoke, Lord and Lady Reading, and the marchioness of Winchester, as well as some banking friends."
Kensal Green Cemetery, London
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