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Farm implement near McBaine, Missouri. Photography by Notley Hawkins. Taken with a Canon EOS R5 camera with a Canon RF15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM lens at ƒ/4.0 with a 239-second exposure at ISO 50, processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.
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Brand new Volvo B7RLE/Wright Eclipse II 2155 is captured whilst on layover on service 21 at Remberance Road, Willenhall.
The new vehicles will be entering service sporadically until the final implementation of the operation of this vehicle type on the Foleshill Road and Ansty Road corridors.
Farm implement near McBaine, Missouri. Photography by Notley Hawkins. Taken with a Canon EOS R5 camera with a Canon RF15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM lens at ƒ/4.0 with a 243-second exposure at ISO 50, processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.
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©Notley Hawkins. All rights reserved.
Just over from the barn (background) and wagon wheel was this fertilizer spreader of some vintage. It seems they were everywhere around the valley. The fertilizer spreaders have been converted to sheet metal long since but I thought that I would give you a shot at the complexity of this very old horse-drawn one. It is among the implements collected along the fence south of the old original Coffin sandstone house. I managed to capture a crisp shot with the monopod. I usually make another snap at the slow speeds like in the window, if I am not confident. I set my record for slow speed shots on this day. I shot extras for safety. Anyway I suppose there are some who are interested.
In the real world, manure hand a real different concept. The root of the word in man in Latin meant the hand or more accurately, manure meant to work with the hand. Perhaps you have seen that root word elsewhere: manna from heaven; manufacturing (something politicians don't think we need anymore); manuals; manuscript. manure spreaders. The lugged wheels drive the big gear which drives the chain, spins the rotary fingers, the top rake to bust clods and slide ridges across the bed to feed backward. The rotary fingers pitch the fertilizer against the rotating blades the fling it ofer an even surface. I expect that a dairy feeding operation had plenty of fertilizer to spread to enrich their pastures. Imagine working your lands with your hands. Chemical fertilizers can damage lands in the long run. Can you imagine rating farmers on what they are putting into their lands instead of removing from it. Sort of like cedars in Lebanon and trees on mud slide slopes in Afganistan when replanting could have happened over centuries. If you want better ecosystems, grow, not burn.
Coffin joined Chivington and participate in the Sand Creek Massacre, an event that some silt heads defend to this day. He was determined to eliminate the Indian threat if not the tribes themselves. I wonder how he would stand on the illegal immigration and if he would put up bronze bilingual plaques on his old barn. Eddie here is praising Chivington, he created his own tribute, in a his own fashion!
The farm/ranch/museum is really the eastern terminus of the St.Vrain Greenway Trail, on state highway #119 at Sandstone Park. Unfortunately, the floods scrubbed the south side of the pedestrian bridge over the river. and the path at Sunset Street so the trail is no longer continuous from the Vance Brand Airport, past Golden Ponds to the east end of town. For a while anyway. It will eventually be repaired but Longmont and Boulder County are self-insured so it will happen when it happens. On the up side, Wall Street doesn't make a dime on this setback. I created a Photo Set for the Coffin Farm/Ranch Agricultural Park.
Disneyland Paris is an entertainment resort in Chessy, France, 32 kilometres (20 miles) east of Paris. It encompasses two theme parks, resort hotels, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex, and a golf course. Disneyland Park is the original theme park of the complex, opening in 1992. A second theme park, Walt Disney Studios Park, opened in 2002. Disneyland Paris celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2022; by then 375 million people had visited, making it the most visited theme park in Europe. It is the second Disney park outside the United States, following the opening of the Tokyo Disney Resort in 1983, and the largest. Disneyland Paris is also the only Disney resort outside of the United States to be completely owned by The Walt Disney Company. It includes seven hotels: Disney Hotel Santa Fe, Disney Hotel Cheyenne, Sequoia Lodge, Newport Bay Club, Hotel New York – the Art of Marvel, The Disneyland Hotel, and Davy Crockett Ranch.
Disneyland Paris is considered to be the largest single-site employer in France with its 17,000 employees.
Ownership
Walt Disney announced a €1 billion ($1.25 billion) bailout plan to rescue its subsidiary Disneyland Paris, the Financial Times reported on 6 October 2014. The park is burdened by its debt, which is calculated at about €1.75 billion ($2.20 billion) and roughly 15 times its gross average earnings.
Until June 2017, Disney only held a minority stake in the resort. In 2017, The Walt Disney Company offered an informal takeover of Euro Disney S.C.A., buying 9% of the company from Kingdom Holding and an open offer of 2 euros per share for the remaining stock. This brought The Walt Disney Company's total ownership to 85.7%. The Walt Disney company also invested an additional 1.5 billion euros to strengthen and develop Disneyland Paris. In June 2017, Disney completed a tender offer to own over 97% of Euro Disney and then implemented a full buyout of the shares they did not already own. In 2018, after taking full control of Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney reported its plans to invest 2 billion euro ($2.47 billion) in Disneyland Paris. The investment aimed to expand the park with a lake and new themed areas based on Marvel superheroes, Disney's animated movie Frozen and Star Wars. The investment also sought to develop 'new attractions and live entertainment experiences'.
History
Following the success of Disneyland in California, plans to build a similar theme park in Europe emerged in 1966 with sites in Frankfurt, Paris, London or Milan under consideration. Under the leadership of E. Cardon Walker, Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983 in Japan with instant success, forming a catalyst for international expansion. In late 1984 the heads of Disney's theme park division, Dick Nunis and Jim Cora, presented a list of approximately 1,200 possible European locations for the park. Britain, France, Italy and Spain were all considered. However, Britain and Italy were dropped from the list due to both lacking a suitable expanse of flat land. By March 1985, the number of possible locations for the park had been reduced to four; two in France and two in Spain. Both nations saw the potential economic advantages of a Disney theme park and offered competing financing deals to Disney.
Both Spanish sites were located near the Mediterranean and offered a subtropical climate similar to Disney's parks in California and Florida. Disney had asked each site to provide average temperatures for every month for the previous 40 years, which proved a complicated endeavour as none of the records were computerised. The site in Pego, Alicante became the front-runner, but the location was controversial as it would have meant the destruction of Marjal de Pego-Oliva marshlands, a site of natural beauty and one of the last homes of the almost extinct Samaruc or Valencia Toothcarp, so there was some local outcry among environmentalists. Disney had also shown interest in a site near Toulon in southern France, not far from Marseille. The pleasing landscape of that region, as well as its climate, made the location a top competitor for what would be called Euro Disneyland. However, shallow bedrock was encountered beneath the site, which would have rendered construction too difficult. Finally, a site in the rural town of Marne-la-Vallée was chosen because of its proximity to Paris and its central location in Western Europe. This location was estimated to be no more than a four-hour drive for 68 million people and no more than a two-hour flight for a further 300 million.
Michael Eisner signed the first letter of agreement with the French government for the 20-square-kilometre (4,940-acre) site on 18 December 1985, and the first financial contracts were drawn up during the following spring. The final contract was signed by the leaders of the Walt Disney Company and the French government and territorial collectivities on 24 March 1987. Construction began in August 1988, and in December 1990, an information centre named "Espace Euro Disney" was opened to show the public what was being constructed. Plans for a theme park next to Euro Disneyland based on the entertainment industry, Disney-MGM Studios Europe, quickly went into development, scheduled to open in 1996 with a construction budget of US$2.3 billion. The construction manager was Bovis.
In order to provide lodging to patrons, it was decided that 5,200 Disney-owned hotel rooms would be built within the complex. In March 1988, Disney and a council of architects (Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Robert A.M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman, and Robert Venturi) decided on an exclusively American theme in which each hotel would depict a region of the United States. At the time of the opening in April 1992, seven hotels collectively housing 5,800 rooms had been built.
An entertainment, shopping, and dining complex based on Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney was designed by Frank Gehry.
With its towers of oxidised silver and bronze-coloured stainless steel under a canopy of lights, it opened as Festival Disney. For a projected daily attendance of 55,000, Euro Disney planned to serve an estimated 14,000 people per hour inside the Euro Disneyland park. In order to accomplish this, 29 restaurants were built inside the park (with a further 11 restaurants built at the Euro Disney resort hotels and five at Festival Disney). Menus and prices were varied with an American flavor predominant and Disney's precedent of not serving alcoholic beverages was continued in the park.
2,300 patio seats (30% of park seating) were installed to satisfy Europeans' expected preference of eating outdoors in good weather. In test kitchens at Walt Disney World, recipes were adapted for European tastes. Walter Meyer, executive chef for menu development at Euro Disney and executive chef of food projects development at Walt Disney World noted, "A few things we did need to change, but most of the time people kept telling us, 'Do your own thing. Do what's American'."
Recruitment/employment
Unlike Disney's American theme parks, Euro Disney aimed for permanent employees (an estimated requirement of 12,000 for the theme park itself), as opposed to seasonal and temporary part-time employees. Casting centres were set up in Paris, London, and Amsterdam. However, it was understood by the French government and Disney that "a concentrated effort would be made to tap into the local French labour market". Disney sought workers with sufficient communication skills, who spoke two European languages (French and one other), and were socially outgoing. Following precedent, Euro Disney set up its own Disney University to train workers. 24,000 people had applied by November 1991.
In 2011, the park provided 55,643 direct and indirect jobs in France. According to Damien Audric, Director of Development and the Environment, Disneyland Paris would generate 63,000 jobs by 2022. Overall, in 2022, Disneyland Paris was still Seine-et-Marne's largest employer.
Controversies
The prospect of a Disney park in France was a subject of debate and controversy. Critics, who included prominent French intellectuals, denounced what they considered to be the cultural imperialism of Euro Disney and felt it would encourage an unhealthy American type of consumerism in France. On 28 June 1992, a group of French farmers blockaded Euro Disney in protest of farm policies supported at the time by the United States.
A journalist at the centre-right French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, "I wish with all my heart that the rebels would set fire to [Euro] Disneyland." Ariane Mnouchkine, a Parisian stage director, named the concept a "cultural Chernobyl", a phrase which would be echoed in the media during Euro Disney's initial years.
In response, French philosopher Michel Serres noted, "It is not America that is invading us. It is we who adore it, who adopt its fashions and above all, its words." Euro Disney S.C.A.'s then-chairman Robert Fitzpatrick responded, "We didn't come in and say O.K., we're going to put a beret and a baguette on Mickey Mouse. We are who we are."
Topics of controversy also included Disney's American managers requiring English to be spoken at all meetings and Disney's appearance code for members of staff, which listed regulations and limitations for the use of makeup, facial hair, tattoos, jewellery, and more.
French labour unions mounted protests against the appearance code, which they saw as "an attack on individual liberty". Others criticised Disney as being insensitive to French culture, individualism, and privacy, because restrictions on individual or collective liberties were illegal under French law, unless it could be demonstrated that the restrictions are requisite to the job and do not exceed what is necessary.
Disney countered by saying that a ruling that barred them from imposing such an employment standard could threaten the image and long-term success of the park. "For us, the appearance code has a great effect from a product identification standpoint," said Thor Degelmann, Euro Disney's personnel director. "Without it we couldn't be presenting the Disney product that people would be expecting."
Opening day and early years
Euro Disney opened for employee preview and testing in March 1992. During this time visitors were mostly park employees and their family members, who tested facilities and operations. The press was able to visit the day before the park's opening day on 12 April 1992.
On 12 April 1992, Euro Disney Resort and its theme park, Euro Disneyland, officially opened. Visitors were warned of chaos on the roads. A government survey indicated that half a million people carried by 90,000 cars might attempt to enter the complex. French radio warned traffic to avoid the area. By midday, the car park was approximately half full, suggesting an attendance level below 25,000. Explanations of the lower-than-expected turnout included speculation that people heeded the advice to stay away and that the one-day strike that cut the direct RER railway connection to Euro Disney from the centre of Paris made the park inaccessible. Due to the European recession that August, the park faced financial difficulties as there were a lack of things to do and an overabundance of hotels, leading to underperformance. The failure of Euro Disney caused the cancellation of several projects like WestCOT, Disney's America, Tomorrowland 2055 at Disneyland and Beastly Kingdom at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
A new Indiana Jones roller-coaster ride was opened at Euro Disney in 1993. A few weeks after the ride opened there were problems with the emergency brakes which resulted in guest injuries.
In 1994, the company was still having financial difficulties. There were rumours that Euro Disney was getting close to having to file for bankruptcy. The banks and the backers had meetings to work out some of the financial problems facing Euro Disney. In March 1994, Team Disney went into negotiations with the banks so that they could get some help for their debt. As a last resort, the Walt Disney Company threatened to close the Disneyland Paris park, leaving the banks with the land.
In May 1992, entertainment magazine The Hollywood Reporter reported that about 25% of Euro Disney's workforce, approximately 3,000 people, had resigned from their jobs because of unacceptable working conditions. It also reported that the park's attendance was far behind expectations. The disappointing attendance can be at least partly explained by the recession and increased unemployment, which was affecting France and most of the rest of the developed world at this time; when construction of the resort began, the economy was still on an upswing.
Euro Disney S.C.A. responded in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, in which Robert Fitzpatrick claimed only 1,000 people had left their jobs. In response to the financial situation, Fitzpatrick ordered that the Disney-MGM Studios Europe project would be put on halt until a further decision could be made. Prices at the hotels were reduced.
Despite these efforts in May 1992, park attendance was around 25,000 (some reports give a figure of 30,000) instead of the predicted 60,000. The Euro Disney Company stock price spiraled downwards and on 23 July 1992, Euro Disney announced an expected net loss in its first year of operation of approximately 300 million French francs. During Euro Disney's first winter, hotel occupancy was so low that it was decided to close the Newport Bay Club hotel during the season.
Initial hopes were that each visitor would spend around US$33 per day, but near the end of 1992, analysts found spending to be around 12% lower. Efforts to improve attendance included serving alcoholic beverages with meals inside the Euro Disneyland park, in response to a presumed European demand, which began 12 June 1993.
By the summer of 1994, Euro Disney was burdened with $3 billion worth of debt. Disney CFO Richard Nanula and Wall Street financier Steve Norris worked with Alwaleed's business advisor Mustafa Al Hejailan to rescue the overleveraged company. In that deal, Disney's 49 percent stake was reduced to 39 percent, the banks agreed to forego interest payments until 1997, Disney wrote off royalties and fees until 1999, and Alwaleed agreed to pay $345 million for a 24 percent stake in Euro Disney.
1995 turnaround
On 1 October 1994, Euro Disney changed its name to Disneyland Paris. On 31 May 1995, a new attraction opened at the theme park. Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune had been planned since the inception of Disneyland Paris under the name Discovery Mountain, but was reserved for a revival of public interest. With a redesign of the attraction (which had premiered as Space Mountain at the Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in 1975) including a "cannon launch" system, inversions, and an on-ride soundtrack, the US$100 million attraction was dedicated in a ceremony attended by celebrities such as Elton John, Claudia Schiffer, and Buzz Aldrin.
On 25 July 1995, Disneyland Paris reported its first quarterly profit of US$35.3 million. On 15 November 1995, the results for the fiscal year ending 30 September 1995 were released; in one year the theme park's attendance had climbed from 8.8 million to 10.7 million, an increase of 21%. Hotel occupancy had also climbed from 60 to 68.5%. After debt payments, Disneyland Paris ended the year with a net profit of US$22.8 million.
2000–2017
As of March 2002, Disneyland Paris underwent a second name change to Disneyland Resort Paris. In 2002, Euro Disney S.C.A. and the Walt Disney Company announced another annual profit for Disneyland Paris. However, it then incurred a net loss in the three years following. By March 2004, the Walt Disney Company had agreed to write off all debt that Euro Disney S.C.A. owed to the Walt Disney Company. On 1 December 2003, Euro Disney S.C.A launched the 'Need Magic?' campaign, which lasted until March 2006 to bring new, first-time European visitors to the resort. And by 2005, having been open fewer than fifteen years, Disneyland Paris had become the number one tourist destination for Europe, outselling the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
In March 2006, Disneyland Resort Paris launched the advertising campaign "believe in your dreams" and paired with the TGV East European Line to encourage European family attendance to the resort. Shortly after announcing a 12% increase in revenues for the fiscal year of 2007, Euro Disney S.C.A. implemented a "reverse split" consolidation of shares of 100 to 1. August 2008 brought the resort's 200 millionth visitor, and made for the third consecutive year of growth in revenues for the resort as well as a record 15.3 million visitors in attendance.
In 2009, the resort demonstrated dedication to the recruitment of new employment positions, especially for the Christmas and summer seasons, which continued in 2010 and 2011 when 2,000 and 3,000 employment contracts being offered, respectively. The 2009 fiscal year saw a decrease in revenues by 7% and a net loss of 63 million followed by stable revenues at 1.2 billion in fiscal 2010. Euro Disney S.C.A. refinanced their debt to Walt Disney Company again for 1.3 billion euros in September 2012.
A study done by the Inter-ministerial Delegation reviewing Disneyland Paris' contribution to the French economy was released in time for the Resort's 20th anniversary in March 2012. It found that despite the resort's financial hardships, it has generated "37 billion euros in tourism-related revenues over twenty years", supports on average 55,000 jobs in France annually, and that one job at Disneyland Paris generates nearly three jobs elsewhere in France.
For the first time in the resort's history, both the Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park closed from 14 to 17 November 2015, as part of France's national days of mourning following the November 2015 Paris attacks.
In 2015, Euro Disney announced major renovations for 2015, 2016 and 2017 in preparation for the complex's 25th anniversary.
The Themed Entertainment Association considers Disneyland Paris to be the leading European resort in 2016 with a total of 13,37 million visitors. With two amusement parks and 5800 rooms, it is followed by the Europa-Park resort with 5,6 million visitors and 953 rooms. The Spanish complex PortAventura World completes the rank top three in Europe. It features two themed-parks and a third being under construction, as well as 2100 rooms.
2017–present: Recent Expansions
On 19 June 2017, the resort's operating company, Euro Disney S.C.A, was acquired by The Walt Disney Company, giving them full control of the resort. In December 2018, Natacha Rafalski took over as CEO. On 1 September 2017 the resort's second nature resort opened as Les Villages Nature Paris.
On 26 March 2017, the opening of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue - a new version of Star Tours - marked the start of Disneyland Paris' 25th anniversary. On 31 March, 2017, forums announced plans for Marvel attractions at Walt Disney Studios Park as well as renovations to the Disneyland Hotel and Disney's Hotel New York in the next ten years. On 14 May 2017, to celebrate Disneyland Paris' 25th anniversary, the park welcomed actors from Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Men Tell No Tales, for the film's European premiere.
On 27 February 2018, Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger announced that company would invest €2 billion into the Disneyland Paris resort. The Walt Disney Studios Park will be expanded with three new areas between 2021 and 2025, based upon Marvel, Frozen and Star Wars.
In March 2018, a Disney Parks West regional division was formed with Disneyland Resort in California, Walt Disney World in Florida, and Disneyland Paris under Catherine Powell, outgoing Disneyland Paris president. This mirrors the Disney Parks East regional division consisting of Shanghai Disney Resort, Hong Kong Disneyland and Walt Disney Attractions Japan and headed by Michael Colglazier. In September 2019, Powell exited her post as president of the Parks West division, with the division dissolving, and Disneyland Paris transferred to Disney Parks International, while the East region reverted to its prior name.
On 1 June 2019, Disneyland Paris sponsored the Magical Pride Party, an LGBTQ celebration. Previous similar events have taken place at the park since 2014, but were not officially sponsored by Disney.
Natacha Rafalski was promoted from chief financial officer to president for Disneyland Paris in December 2018. On 15 March 2020, in line with other Disney parks and resorts, Disneyland Paris was shut down due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park reopened to the public on 15 July with the rest of the resort. On 29 October 2020, the resort closed again due to a second nationwide lockdown. Disneyland Paris reopened on 17 June 2021.
In 2022,Disney's shares in Villages Nature Paris were sold.
In 2022, Disneyland Paris celebrated its 30th anniversary. In March 2022, in celebration of its 30th anniversary, Disneyland Paris marked its 30 years with a nightly drone show entitled 'Disney D-Light' in partnership with the Bordeaux-based company Dronisos. The visual spectacle was realized with the use of 200 drones. In fact, Disney D-Light won the Park World Excellence Awards' title of the 'Best Live Entertainment of the Year' in 2022.
In the summer of 2022, to mark the park's anniversary in France, Disneyland Paris inaugurated the Marvel Avengers Campus, an area dedicated to the superheroes of the Marvel Universe, with the presence of the actress Brie Larson who plays Captain Marvel.
At the Expo of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), Disneyland Paris' 30th Anniversary Celebration was elected for the 'Most Creative Property-Wide Event,Amusement Parks and Attractions, Including Water Parks, Annual Attendance More than 1 million'.
Entertainment shows
On 8 July 2017, Disneyland hosted its first-ever EDM festival entitled Electroland, in celebration of Disneyland Paris' 25th anniversary. Steve Aoki, NERVO & Michael Calfan were the main highlights of the first edition. The second edition of the festival was held on 29 and 30 June 2018, which featured Afrojack, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Klingande, Robin Schulz, Bob Sinclair, Mosimann and Lovely Laura & Ben Santiago. The third edition was held over a span of 3 days from 5 July through to 7 July in 2019. The theme of the third edition was based upon Disney's movie The Lion King. The lineup included Steve Aoki, Nervo, Showtek, The Magician, Nicky Romero, Alesso, Armin Van Buuren, Nora En Pure etc. Disneyland also announced the fourth edition of the 3-day festival in 2020 starting from 4 July.
Disney Junior Dream Factory
In July 2021, Disneyland Paris launched a new show; Disney Junior Dream Factory, which lasts 20 minutes and whose theme is 'dare to believe in your dreams and they will come true'. The show includes characters like Mickey, Minnie and Timon. It also features characters like Disney Junior's rising stars Vampirina and Fancy Nancy Clancy, joined by the Dream Factory crew. To enable as many people as possible to take part in the story and the theme of the show, Disneyland Paris presents a French sign language version of the show every weekend.
Together
In July 2023, Disneyland Paris introduced its new show 'Together' which includes Dory, Coco, Buzz Lightyear and all the characters from Pixar films.[91] It is a cine-concert that features a live orchestra with actors on stage, music extracted from the movies and original compositions.
Regional impact
Disneyland Paris is considered to be Europe's leading tourist destination. It is also the driving force behind the urban and economic development of the Val-d’Europe conurbation.
Disneyland is also one of Europe's leading private tourist destinations with nearly 15 million visitors every year. After 25 years of its opening, Disneyland Paris recorded 320 million visits in 2017. The same year, it was reported that Disneyland Paris benefited the French economy by €66 billion in added value since its opening in 1992. It was also noted that Disneyland Paris contributed to the French economy through producing 56,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2017.
Besides, Disneyland Paris contributes to the sector of tourism in France. Indeed, tourists visiting Disneyland Paris generate 6% of tourism revenue in France and 17% of sales in the Ile-de-France region. In 2023, it was reported that more than 375 million visitors have been to Disneyland Paris with an average of 50% French and 50% foreign.
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is an orthodox cathedral in the Tallinn Old Town, Estonia. It was built to a design by Mikhail Preobrazhensky in a typical Russian Revival style between 1894 and 1900, during the period when the country was part of the Russian Empire. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is Tallinn's largest and grandest orthodox cupola cathedral. It is dedicated to Saint Alexander Nevsky who in 1242 won the Battle of the Ice on Lake Peipus, in the territorial waters of present-day Estonia. The late Russian patriarch, Alexis II, started his priestly ministry in the church.
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral crowns the hill of Toompea where the Estonian folk hero Kalevipoeg is said to have been buried according to a legend. (There are many such legendary burial places of him in Estonia.) The cathedral was built during the period of late 19th century Russification and was so disliked by many Estonians as a symbol of oppression that the Estonian authorities scheduled the cathedral for demolition in 1924, but the decision was never implemented due to lack of funds and the building's massive construction. As the USSR was officially non-religious, many churches including this cathedral were left to decline. The church has been meticulously restored since Estonia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The main environmental issues associated with the implementation of the 5G network come with the manufacturing of the many component parts of the 5G infrastructure. In addition, the proliferation of new devices that will use the 5G network that is tied to the acceleration of demand from consumers for new 5G-dependent devices will have serious environmental consequences. The 5G network will inevitably cause a large increase in energy usage among consumers, which is already one of the main contributors to climate change. Additionally, the manufacturing and maintenance of the new technologies associated with 5G creates waste and uses important resources that have detrimental consequences for the environment. 5G networks use technology that has harmful effects on birds, which in turn has cascading effects through entire ecosystems. And, while 5G developers are seeking to create a network that has fewer environmental impacts than past networks, there is still room for improvement and the consequences of 5G should be considered before it is widely rolled out. 5G stands for the fifth generation of wireless technology. It is the wave of wireless technology surpassing the 4G network that is used now. Previous generations brought the first cell phones (1G), text messaging (2G), online capabilities (3G), and faster speed (4G). The fifth generation aims to increase the speed of data movement, be more responsive, and allow for greater connectivity of devices simultaneously.[2] This means that 5G will allow for nearly instantaneous downloading of data that, with the current network, would take hours. For example, downloading a movie using 5G would take mere seconds. These new improvements will allow for self-driving cars, massive expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) device use, and acceleration of new technological advancements used in everyday activities by a much wider range of people. While 5G is not fully developed, it is expected to consist of at least five new technologies that allow it to perform much more complicated tasks at faster speeds. The new technologies 5G will use are hardware that works with much higher frequencies (millimeter wavelengths), small cells, massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output), beamforming, and full duplex.[3] Working together, these new technologies will expand the potential of many of the devices used today and devices being developed for the future. Millimeter waves are a higher frequency wavelength than the radio wavelength generally used in wireless transmission today.[4] The use of this portion of the spectrum corresponds to higher frequency and shorter wavelengths, in this case in the millimeter range (vs the lower radio frequencies where the wavelengths can be in the meters to hundreds of kilometers). Higher frequency waves allow for more devices to be connected to the same network at the same time, because there is more space available compared to the radio waves that are used today. The use of this portion of the spectrum has much longer wavelengths than of that anticipated for a portion of the 5G implementation. The waves in use now can measure up to tens of centimeters, while the new 5G waves would be no greater than ten millimeters.[5] The millimeter waves will create more transmission space for the ever-expanding number of people and devices crowding the current networks. The millimeter waves will create more space for devices to be used by consumers, which will increase energy usage, subsequently leading to increased global warming. Millimeter waves are very weak in their ability to connect two devices, which is why 5G needs something called “small cells” to give full, uninterrupted coverage. Small cells are essentially miniature cell towers that would be placed 250 meters apart throughout cities and other areas needing coverage.[6] The small cells are necessary as emissions [or signals] at this higher frequency/shorter wavelength have more difficulty passing through solid objects and are even easily intercepted by rain.[7] The small cells could be placed on anything from trees to street lights to the sides of businesses and homes to maximize connection and limit “dead zones” (areas where connections are lost). The next new piece of technology necessary for 5G is massive MIMO, which stands for multiple input multiple output. The MIMO describes the capacity of 5G’s base stations, because those base stations would be able to handle a much higher amount of data at any one moment of time. Currently, 4G base stations have around eight transmitters and four receivers which direct the flow of data between devices.[9] 5G will exceed this capacity with the use of massive MIMO that can handle 22 times more ports. Figure 1 shows how a massive MIMO tower would be able to direct a higher number of connections at once. However, massive MIMO causes signals to be crossed more easily. Crossed signals cause an interruption in the transmission of data from one device to the next due to a clashing of the wavelengths as they travel to their respective destinations. To overcome the cross signals problem, beamforming is needed. To maximize the efficiency of sending data another new technology called beamforming will be used in 5G. For data to be sent to the correct user, a way of directing the wavelengths without interference is necessary. This is done through a technique called beamforming. Beamforming directs where exactly data are being sent by using a variety of antennas to organize signals based on certain characteristics, such as the magnitude of the signal. By directly sending signals to where they need to go, beamforming decreases the chances that a signal is dropped due to the interference of a physical object.
One way that 5G will follow through on its promise of faster data transmission is through sending and receiving data simultaneously. The method that allows for simultaneous input and output of data is called full duplexing. While full duplex capabilities allow for faster transmission of data, there is an issue of signal interference, because of echoes. Full duplexing will cut transmission times in half, because it allows for a response to occur as soon as an input is delivered, eliminating the turnaround time that is seen in transmission today. Because these technologies are new and untested, it is hard to say how they will impact our environment. This raises another issue: there are impacts that can be anticipated and predicted, but there are also unanticipated impacts because much of the new technologies are untested. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate some of detrimental environmental consequences of the new technologies and the 5G network, because we know these technologies will increase exposure to harmful radiation, increase mining of rare minerals, increase waste, and increase energy usage. The main 5G environmental concerns have to do with two of the five new components: the millimeter waves and the small cells. The whole aim of the new 5G network is to allow for more devices to be used by the consumer at faster rates than ever before, because of this goal there will certainly be an increase in energy usage globally. Energy usage is one of the main contributors to climate change today and an increase in energy usage would cause climate change to increase drastically as well. 5G will operate on a higher frequency portion of the spectrum to open new space for more devices. The smaller size of the millimeter waves compared to radio frequency waves allows for more data to be shared more quickly and creates a wide bandwidth that can support much larger tasks.[15] While the idea of more space for devices to be used is great for consumers, this will lead to a spike in energy usage for two reasons – the technology itself is energy demanding and will increase demand for more electronic devices. The ability for more devices to be used on the same network creates more incentive for consumers to buy electronics and use them more often. This will have a harmful impact on the environment through increased energy use. Climate change has several underlying contributors; however, energy usage is gaining attention in its severity with regards to perpetuating climate change. Before 5G has even been released, about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the ICT industry.[16] While 2% may not seem like a very large portion, it translates to around 860 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.[17] Greenhouse gas emissions are the main contributors to natural disasters, such as flooding and drought, which are increasing severity and occurrence every year. Currently, roughly 85% of the energy used in the United States can be attributed to fossil fuel consumption.[18] The dwindling availability of fossil fuels and the environmental burden of releasing these fossil fuels into our atmosphere signal an immediate need to shift to other energy sources. Without a shift to other forms of energy production and the addition of technology allowed by the implementation of 5G, the strain on our environment will rise and the damage may never be repaired. With an increase in energy usage through technology and the implementation of 5G, it can be expected that the climate change issues faced today will only increase. The overall contribution of carbon dioxide emissions from the ICT industry has a huge impact on climate change and will continue to have even larger impacts without proper actions. In a European Union report, researchers estimated that in order to keep the increase in global temperature below 2° Celsius a decrease in carbon emissions of around 15-30% is necessary by 2020. Engineers claim that the small cells used to provide the 5G connection will be energy efficient and powered in a sustainable way; however the maintenance and production of these cells is more of an issue. Supporters of the 5G network advocate that the small cells will use solar or wind energy to stay sustainable and green.[20] These devices, labeled “fuel-cell energy servers” will work as clean energy-based generators for the small cells.[21] While implementing base stations that use sustainable energy to function would be a step in the right direction in environmental conservation, it is not the solution to the main issue caused by 5G, which is the impact that the massive amount of new devices in the hands of consumers will have on the amount of energy required to power these devices. The wasteful nature of manufacturing and maintenance of both individual devices and the devices used to deliver 5G connection could become a major contributor of climate change. The promise of 5G technology is to expand the number of devices functioning might be the most troubling aspect of the new technology. Cell phones, computers, and other everyday devices are manufactured in a way that puts stress on the environment. A report by the EPA estimated that in 2010, 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity and heat production making it the largest single source of emissions.[22] The main gas emitted by this sector is carbon dioxide, due to the burning of natural gas, such as coal, to fuel electricity sources.[23] Carbon dioxide is one of the most common greenhouse gases seen in our atmosphere, it traps heat in earth’s atmosphere trying to escape into space, which causes the atmosphere to warm generating climate change. Increased consumption of devices is taking a toll on the environment. As consumers gain access to more technologies the cycle of consumption only expands. As new devices are developed, the older devices are thrown out even if they are still functional. Often, big companies will purposefully change their products in ways that make certain partner devices (such as chargers or earphones) unusable–creating demand for new products. Economic incentives mean that companies will continue these practices in spite of the environmental impacts. One of the main issues with the 5G network and the resulting increase in consumption of technological devices is that the production required for these devices is not sustainable. In the case of making new devices, whether they be new smart-phones or the small cells needed for 5G, the use of nonrenewable metals is required. It is extremely difficult to use metals for manufacturing sustainably, because metals are not a renewable resource. Metals used in the manufacturing of the smart devices frequently used today often cannot be recycled in the same way many household items can be recycled. Because these technologies cannot be recycled, they create tons of waste when they are created and tons of waste when they are thrown away. There are around six billion mobile devices in use today, with this number expected to increase drastically as the global population increases and new devices enter the market. One estimate of the life-time carbon emissions of a single device–not including related accessories and network connection–is that a device produces a total of 45kg of carbon dioxide at a medium level of usage over three years. This amount of emission is comparable to that of driving the average European car for 300km. But, the most environmentally taxing stage of a mobile device life cycle is during the production stage, where around 68% of total carbon emissions is produced, equating to 30kg of carbon dioxide. To put this into perspective, an iPhone X weighs approximately 0.174kg, so in order to produce the actual device, 172 iPhone X’s worth of carbon dioxide is also created. These emissions vary from person to person and between different devices, but it’s possible to estimate the impact one device has on the environment. 5G grants the capacity for more devices to be used, significantly increase the existing carbon footprint of smart devices today. Energy usage for the ever-growing number of devices on the market and in homes is another environmental threat that would be greatly increased by the new capabilities brought by the 5G network. Often, energy forecasts overlook the amount of energy that will be consumed by new technologies, which leads to a skewed understanding of the actual amount of energy expected to be used.[30] One example of this is with IoT devices.[31] IoT is one of the main aspects of 5G people in the technology field are most excited about. 5G will allow for a larger expansion of IoT into the everyday household.[32] While some IoT devices promise lower energy usage abilities, the 50 billion new IoT devices expected to be produced and used by consumers will surpass the energy used by today’s electronics.
The small cells required for the 5G network to properly function causes another issue of waste with the new network. Because of the weak nature of the millimeter waves used in the 5G technology, small cells will need to be placed around 250 meters apart to insure continuous connection. The main issue with these small cells is that the manufacturing and maintenance of these cells will create a lot of waste. The manufacturing of technology takes a large toll on the environment, due to the consumption of non-renewable resources to produce devices, and technology ending up in landfills. Implementing these small cells into large cities where they must be placed at such a high density will have a drastic impact on technology waste. Technology is constantly changing and improving, which is one of the huge reasons it has such high economic value. But, when a technological advancement in small cells happens, the current small cells would have to be replaced. The short lifespan of devices created today makes waste predictable and inevitable. In New York City, where there would have to be at least 3,135,200 small cells, the waste created in just one city when a new advancement in small cells is implemented would have overwhelming consequences on the environment. 5G is just one of many examples of how important it is to look at the consequences of new advancements before their implementation. While it is exciting to see new technology that promises to improve everyday life, the consequences of additional waste and energy usage must be considered to preserve a sustainable environment in the future. There is some evidence that the new devices and technologies associated with 5G will be harmful to delicate ecosystems. The main component of the 5G network that will affect the earth’s ecosystems is the millimeter waves. The millimeter waves that are being used in developing the 5G network have never been used at such scale before. This makes it especially difficult to know how they will impact the environment and certain ecosystems. However, studies have found that there are some harms caused by these new technologies. The millimeter waves, specifically, have been linked to many disturbances in the ecosystems of birds. In a study by the Centre for Environment and Vocational Studies of Punjab University, researchers observed that after exposure to radiation from a cell tower for just 5-30 minutes, the eggs of sparrows were disfigured.[34] The disfiguration of birds exposed for such a short amount of time to these frequencies is significant considering that the new 5G network will have a much higher density of base stations (small cells) throughout areas needing connection. The potential dangers of having so many small cells all over areas where birds live could cause whole populations of birds to have mutations that threaten their population’s survival. Additionally, a study done in Spain showed breeding, nesting, and roosting was negatively affected by microwave radiation emitted by a cell tower. Again, the issue of the increase in the amount of connection conductors in the form of small cells to provide connection with the 5G network is seen to be harmful to species that live around humans. Additionally, Warnke found that cellular devices had a detrimental impact on bees.[36] In this study, beehives exposed for just ten minutes to 900MHz waves fell victim to colony collapse disorder.Colony collapse disorder is when many of the bees living in the hive abandon the hive leaving the queen, the eggs, and a few worker bees. The worker bees exposed to this radiation also had worsened navigational skills, causing them to stop returning to their original hive after about ten days. Bees are an incredibly important part of the earth’s ecosystem. Around one-third of the food produced today is dependent on bees for pollination, making bees are a vital part of the agricultural system. Bees not only provide pollination for the plant-based food we eat, but they are also important to maintaining the food livestock eats. Without bees, a vast majority of the food eaten today would be lost or at the very least highly limited. Climate change has already caused a large decline in the world’s bee population. The impact that the cell towers have on birds and bees is important to understand, because all ecosystems of the earth are interconnected. If one component of an ecosystem is disrupted the whole system will be affected. The disturbances of birds with the cell towers of today would only increase, because with 5G a larger number of small cell radio-tower-like devices would be necessary to ensure high quality connection for users. Having a larger number of high concentrations of these millimeter waves in the form of small cells would cause a wider exposure to bees and birds, and possibly other species that are equally important to our environment.As innovation continues, it is important that big mobile companies around the world consider the impact 5G will have on the environment before pushing to have it widely implemented. The companies pushing for the expansion of 5G may stand to make short term economic gains. While the new network will undoubtedly benefit consumers greatly, looking at 5G’s long-term environmental impacts is also very important so that the risks are clearly understood and articulated. The technology needed to power the new 5G network will inevitably change how mobile devices are used as well as their capabilities. This technological advancement will also change the way technology and the environment interact. The change from using radio waves to using millimeter waves and the new use of small cells in 5G will allow more devices to be used and manufactured, more energy to be used, and have detrimental consequences for important ecosystems. While it is unrealistic to call for 5G to not become the new network norm, companies, governments, and consumers should be proactive and understand the impact that this new technology will have on the environment. 5G developers should carry out Environmental Impact Assessments that fully estimate the impact that the new technology will have on the environment before rushing to widely implement it. Environmental Impact Assessments are intended to assess the impact new technologies have on the environment, while also maximizing potential benefits to the environment. This process mitigates, prevents, and identifies environmental harm, which is imperative to ensuring that the environment is sustainable and sound in the future. Additionally, the method of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of devices would also be extremely beneficial for understanding the impact that 5G will inevitably have on the environment. An LCA can be used to assess the impact that devices have on carbon emissions throughout their life span, from the manufacturing of the device to the energy required to power the device and ultimately the waste created when the device is discarded into a landfill or other disposal system. By having full awareness of the impact new technology will have on the environment ways to combat the negative impacts can be developed and implemented effectively.
jsis.washington.edu/news/what-will-5g-mean-for-the-enviro...
Farm implement near Glasgow in rural Saline County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV camera with a Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at ƒ/4.0 with a 148 second exposure at ISO 100. Processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.
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Newington, Ontario (Nearby: Avonmore, Finch, Lunenburg, Berwick, Ingleside) Jacob Baker was the first settler. When the post office was established in 1862, he became the postmaster and named the place Newington after his hometown of Newington-on-Stoke in England.
- from "Lovell's Gazetteer of the Dominion of Canada (1873)" - NEWINGTON, a post village in Stormont County, Ontario, 10 miles from Wales. It contains 2 stores and a saw mill. The banking point is Avonmore, 7 miles distant. The population in 1873 was 90.
In 1905 the village of Newington had a population of 250, S.Z. Wets sold agricultural implements and furniture; Sam McAteer and Leonard Thompson were blacksmiths; Leonard TW.J. Melross was the local butcer; J.W. Warner and Son, carriages; H.T. Bowman, cheese and butter; health was looked after by Dr. J.S. Dickey; Leonard Hawn and G.F. Jardine ran general stores; John McAvoy operated the hotel and the village had a branch of the Sterling Bank of Canada and the Thompson brothers were tinkers.
- from "Lovell's Gazetteer of the Dominion of Canada (1908)" - NEWINGTON, a post village in Stormont County, Ontario, and a station on the Ottawa & New York RR., northwest of Cornwall, on the G.T.R. It has 4 churches (Epis., Meth., Baptist and Holiness Movement), 4 stores, 1 hotel, grist, saw and planing mills, 1 cheese factory. 1 branch bank, besides express and telegraph offices. The population in 1908 was about 200.
Link to more history - cornwallcommunitymuseum.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/tour-of-...
/ NEWINGTON / NO 8 / 07 / ONT. / - split ring cancel
Message on postcard reads: November 8 1909 - Hello there, I received your card quite a few days ago - did not answer thought I would see you but I thought maybe you were dead of drowned in all this rain - I am at home now - glad you got over that ???? ok. I remain. J. ????
Postcard was addressed to: Mr. A. Crites / Aultsville / Ontario
- it has a partial AULTSVILLE, Ontario split ring arrival marking with a date - 8 November 1907.
Link to a photo of the Ault Store in Aultsville (where the Post Office was located) - www.ghosttownpix.com/lostvillages/aultsvilImg.html
Taken with a Praktina IIA camera in week 346 of my 52 film cameras in 52 weeks project:
www.flickr.com/photos/tony_kemplen/collections/72157623113584240
Agfa Vista 200 film from Poundland, developed in the Rollei C41 kit.
Persistent URL: digital.lib.muohio.edu/u?/tradecards,4697
Subject (TGM): Women; Caricatures; Puns (Visual works); Wheat; Agricultural machinery & implements; Floor coverings; Dry goods stores;
Historical background
The earliest known implementation of road space rationing took place in Rome, as carriages and carts pulled by horses created serious congestion problems in several Roman cities. In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar declared the center of Rome off-limits between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. to all vehicles except for carriages transporting priests, officials, visitors, and high ranking citizens.
Road space rationing (Spanish: Restricción vehicular; Portuguese: Rodízio veicular) is a travel demand management strategy aimed to reduce the negative externalities generated by peak urban travel demand in excess of available supply or road capacity, through artificially restricting demand (vehicle travel) by rationing the scarce common good road capacity, especially during the peak periods. This objective is achieved by restricting traffic access into an urban cordon area, city center (CBD), or district based upon the last digits of the license number on pre-established days and during certain periods, usually, the peak hours.
The practical implementation of this traffic restraint policy is common in Latin America, and in many cases, the road rationing has as a main goal the reduction of air pollution, such as the cases of México City, and Santiago, Chile. São Paulo, with a fleet of 6 million vehicles in 2007, is the largest metropolis in the world with such a travel restriction, implemented first in 1996 as measured to mitigate air pollution, and thereafter made permanent in 1997 to relieve traffic congestion. More recent implementations in Costa Rica and Honduras have had the objective of reducing oil consumption, due to the high impact this import has on the economy of small countries, and considering the steep increases in oil prices that began in 2003. Bogotá, Quito, and La Paz, Bolivia also have similar restriction schemes in place. After a temporary implementation of road space rationing to reduce air pollution in the city during the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing has implemented several rationing schemes to improve the city's air quality.
~~Wikipedia
Anne Finucane, Vice-Chairman, Bank of America, USA, Lutfey Siddiqi, Visiting Professor-in-Practice, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader, Anne Ackerley, Head, Retirement Group, BlackRock, USA and Sonja Haut, Head, Strategic Measurement and Materiality, Novartis, Switzerlandspeaking during the Session "Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism 2" at the World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils 2019. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell
A farm on the Missouri River bottoms near Huntsdale in Boone County Missouri Notley Hawkins Photography.
©Notley Hawkins
An abandoned farm implement near Overton in Cooper County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera with a EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens at f.4.0 with a .5 second exposure at ISO 800 along with three Quantum Qflash Trios with red, green and blue gels. Processed with Adobe Lightroom 6.4.
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I found a good deal on the Sith TIE Dagger set and felt inspired to build a realistic version. My first thought was that it could just be some different wings for my TJE Outlander, but then I realized the DG is about 30 years more advanced than the regular TIE fighter or the OL and it would not make sense to use the same airframe instead of implementing new and improved technology. The TJE DG is designed with the latest stealth shaping, internal weapons bays, and thrust vectoring engines to give it an advantage over any Resistance fighter.
My main inspiration was the J-20, F-22, and FB-22
Anne Ackerley, Head, Retirement Group, BlackRock, USA speaking during the Session "Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism 2" at the World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils 2019. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell
Our youth mentors and entrepreneurs are themselves responsible for the development and implementation of the Hummingbird Programme. They find their drive and willpower from knowing that they can help change the tragic social reality in Brazil through their own concrete actions. Their fuel is the smiles on the faces of the children receiving their attention, like the young girl above.
How could they possibly resist such a charming invitation?
Today was the beginning of a new development in the Hummingbird Project called Beija-Flor na Comunidade (Hummingbird in the Community), which literally means we are taking Hummingbird to the community instead of the community coming to us. In other words, Hummingbird is spreading its wings!
These images are from today's activities, which finished only a few hours ago. Tomorrow we will be in a different locality, in a different community.
The programme is part of a new strategy being developed by our youth mentors to get a preliminary feel in connection with their objectives to implant small Hummingbird nuclei in the more distant parts of our community, thus bringing our activities to the poorest kids who have no means of reaching our main centre.
The first community to receive some of Hummingbird’s vibrant activities was the Sitio Joaninha, which is a rough hilly area about 6 kilometres away from us, where many of the families who used to work on the rubbish tip live. The tip was closed down a few years ago and the area covered with topsoil so as to recuperate some of the natural vegetation.
Most of the shanty homes were constructed during the active years of the tip, when entire families found their livelihoods under the most unhealthy and hazardous working conditions. Since its closure there has been very few alternatives in the way of work and habitation, so very few have been able to move to better conditions. To the contrary; the area has rapidly grown to accommodate even more poverty-stricken families who have no other alternative than to grab a small plot of land and try to survive on what little is available in terms of public amenities in such places.
The majority of homes have no running water and depend on the council delivering drinking water by truck each day. Electricity is acquired through a series of illegal connections, which people have hooked-up to the main electricity network through a maze of literally thousands of metres of wiring crossing the landscape in all directions in order to bring power to one’s home.
This is quite common during the rapid growth of favela (shanty) areas and pressures from the inhabitants will eventually cause most councils to come up with a more satisfactory and less risky solution.
Many of the children who live here have a long way to walk to reach school, as there is no public transport. The tendency is therefore not to go, especially during the rainy or colder seasons. Very few have the willpower or even the means of getting to Hummingbird to participate in all the good things we have to offer in our Street Migration Prevention Programme, although there are some who do.
This is the main reason for us to bring Hummingbird to the kids. If we can manage to finance a more permanent solution we will be able to continue with a variety of activities throughout the entire year and not just during the school holiday season as is this week's proposal.
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide. Located in Phnom Penh, the site is a former secondary school which was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21; Khmer: មន្ទីរស-២១) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its fall in 1979. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng and it was one of between 150 and 196 torture and execution centers established by the Khmer Rouge. On 26 July 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted the prison's chief, Kang Kek Iew, for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. He died on 2 September 2020 while serving a life sentence.
To accommodate the victims of purges that were important enough for the attention of the Khmer Rouge, a new detention center was planned in the building that was formerly known as Tuol Svay Prey High School, named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings of the complex were converted in March or April 1976 into a prison and an interrogation center. Before, other buildings in town were used already as prison S-21. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison for the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes and suicides.
From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered. Those arrested included some of the highest ranking politicians such as Khoy Thoun, Vorn Vet and Hu Nim. Although the official reason for their arrest was "espionage", these men may have been viewed by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot as potential leaders of a coup against him. Prisoners' families were sometimes brought en masse to be interrogated and later executed at the Choeung Ek extermination center.
In 1979, the prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese army. At some point between 1979 and 1980 the prison was reopened by the government of the People's Republic of Kampuchea as a historical museum memorializing the actions of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. After that, they were forced to strip to their underwear, and their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to their cells. Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other.
The day began in the prison at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were loose or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful in checking the shackles and cells. The prisoners received four small spoonfuls of rice porridge and a watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days.
The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted upon any prisoner who disobeyed. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards. The prisoners were sometimes forced to eat human feces and drink human urine. The unhygienic living conditions in the prison caused skin diseases, lice, rashes, ringworm and other ailments. The prison's medical staff were untrained and offered treatment only to sustain prisoners' lives after they had been injured during interrogation. When prisoners were taken from one place to another for interrogation, they were blindfolded. Guards and prisoners were not allowed to converse. Moreover, within the prison, people who were in different groups were not allowed to have contact with one another.[5]
Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation. The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices. Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners' heads under water, and the use of the waterboarding technique. Women were sometimes raped by the interrogators, even though sexual abuse was against Democratic Kampuchea (DK) policy. The perpetrators who were found out were executed. Although many prisoners died from this kind of abuse, killing them outright was discouraged, since the Khmer Rouge needed their confessions. The "Medical Unit" at Tuol Sleng, however, did kill at least 100 prisoners by bleeding them to death. It is proven that medical experiments were performed on certain prisoners. There is clear evidence that patients in Cambodia were sliced open and had organs removed with no anesthetic. The camp's director, Kang Kek Iew, has acknowledged that "live prisoners were used for surgical study and training. Draining blood was also done."
In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal background. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners' thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. At the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners' friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were in the confession list were often called in for interrogation.
Typical confessions ran into thousands of words in which the prisoner would interweave true events in their lives with imaginary accounts of their espionage activities for the CIA, the KGB, or Vietnam. Physical torture was combined with sleep deprivation and deliberate neglect of the prisoners. The torture implements are on display in the museum. It is believed that the vast majority of prisoners were innocent of the charges against them and that the torture produced false confessions.
For the first year of S-21's existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and family members were taken to the Boeung Choeung Ek ("Crow's Feet Pond") extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh. There, they were killed by a group of teenagers led by a Comrade Teng, being battered to death with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other makeshift weapons owing to the scarcity and cost of ammunition. After the prisoners were executed, the soldiers who had accompanied them from S-21 buried them in graves that held as few as 6 and as many as 100 bodies.
Almost all non-Cambodians had left the country by early May 1975, following an overland evacuation of the French Embassy in trucks. The few who remained were seen as a security risk. Though most of the foreign victims were either Vietnamese or Thai, a number of Western prisoners, many picked up at sea by Khmer Rouge patrol boats, also passed through S-21 between April 1976 and December 1978. No foreign prisoners survived captivity in S-21.
Even though the vast majority of the victims were Cambodian, some were foreigners, including 488 Vietnamese, 31 Thai, four French, two Americans, two Australians, one Laotian, one Arab, one Briton, one Canadian, one New Zealander, and one Indonesian. Khmers of Indian and Pakistani descent were also victims.
Two Franco-Vietnamese brothers named Rovin and Harad Bernard were detained in April 1976 after they were transferred from Siem Reap, where they had worked tending cattle. Another Frenchman named Andre Gaston Courtigne, a 30-year-old clerk and typist at the French embassy, was arrested the same month along with his Khmer wife in Siem Reap.
It is possible that a handful of French nationals who went missing after the 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh also passed through S-21. Two Americans were captured under similar circumstances. James Clark and Lance McNamara in April 1978 were sailing when their boat drifted off course and sailed into Cambodian waters. They were arrested by Khmer patrol boats, taken ashore, where they were blindfolded, placed on trucks, and taken to the then-deserted Phnom Penh.
Twenty-six-year-old John D. Dewhirst, a British tourist, was one of the youngest foreigners to die in the prison. He was sailing with his New Zealand companion, Kerry Hamill, and their Canadian friend Stuart Glass when their boat drifted into Cambodian territory and was intercepted by Khmer patrol boats on August 13, 1978. Glass was killed during the arrest, while Dewhirst and Hamill were captured, blindfolded, and taken to shore. Both were executed after having been tortured for several months at Tuol Sleng. Witnesses reported that a foreigner was burned alive; initially, it was suggested that this might have been John Dewhirst, but a survivor would later identify Kerry Hamill as the victim of this particular act of brutality. Robert Hamill, his brother and a champion Atlantic rower, would years later make a documentary, Brother Number One, about his brother's incarceration.
One of the last foreign prisoners to die was twenty-nine-year-old American Michael S. Deeds, who was captured with his friend Christopher E. DeLance on November 24, 1978, while sailing from Singapore to Hawaii. His confession was signed a week before the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. In 1989, Deeds' brother, Karl Deeds, traveled to Cambodia in attempts to find his brother's remains, but was unsuccessful. On September 3, 2012, DeLance's photograph was identified among the caches of inmate portraits.
As of 1999, there were a total of 79 foreign victims on record, but former Tuol Sleng Khmer Rouge photographer Nim Im claims that the records are not complete. On top of that, there is also an eyewitness account of a Filipino, a Cuban and a Swiss who passed through the prison, though no official records of either are shown.
Out of an estimated 20,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors: seven adults and five children. One child died shortly after the liberation.[5] As of mid-September 2011, only three of the adults and four children are thought to still be alive: Chum Mey, Bou Meng, and Chim Meth. All three said they were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, is an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Meth was held in S-21 for 2 weeks and transferred to the nearby Prey Sar prison. She may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom where Comrade Duch was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasising her provincial accent during her interrogations. Vann Nath, who was spared because of his ability to paint, died on September 5, 2011. Norng Chan Phal, one of the surviving children, published his story in 2018.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia has recently estimated that, in fact, at least 179 prisoners were freed from S-21 between 1975 and 1979 and approximately 23 prisoners (including 5 children, two of them siblings Norng Chanphal and Norng Chanly) survived when the prison was liberated in January 1979. One child died shortly thereafter. Of the 179 prisoners who were released, most disappeared and only a few are known to have survived after 1979. It was found that at least 60 persons (out of the DC Cam list) who are listed as having survived were first released but later rearrested and executed.
The prison had a staff of 1,720 people throughout the whole period. Of those, approximately 300 were office staff, internal workforce and interrogators. The other 1,400 were general workers, including people who grew food for the prison. Several of these workers were children taken from the prisoner families. The chief of the prison was Khang Khek Ieu (also known as Comrade Duch), a former mathematics teacher who worked closely with Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Other leading figures of S-21 were Kim Vat aka Ho (deputy chief of S-21), Peng (chief of guards), Mam Nai aka Chan (chief of the Interrogation Unit), and Tang Sin Hean aka Pon (interrogator). Pon was the person who interrogated important people such as Keo Meas, Nay Sarann, Ho Nim, Tiv Ol, and Phok Chhay.
The documentation unit was responsible for transcribing tape recorded confessions, typing the handwritten notes from prisoners' confessions, preparing summaries of confessions, and maintaining files. In the photography sub-unit, workers took mug shots of prisoners when they arrived, pictures of prisoners who had died while in detention, and pictures of important prisoners after they were executed. Thousands of photographs have survived, but thousands are still missing.
The defense unit was the largest unit in S-21. The guards in this unit were mostly teenagers. Many guards found the unit's strict rules hard to obey. Guards were not allowed to talk to prisoners, to learn their names, or to beat them. They were also forbidden to observe or eavesdrop on interrogations, and they were expected to obey 30 regulations, which barred them from such things as taking naps, sitting down or leaning against a wall while on duty. They had to walk, guard, and examine everything carefully. Guards who made serious mistakes were arrested, interrogated, jailed and put to death. Most of the people employed at S-21 were terrified of making mistakes and feared being tortured and killed.
The interrogation unit was split into three separate groups: Krom Noyobai or the political unit, Krom Kdao or the hot unit and Krom Angkiem, or the chewing unit. The hot unit (sometimes called the cruel unit) was allowed to use torture. In contrast, the cold unit (sometimes called the gentle unit) was prohibited from using torture to obtain confessions. If they could not make prisoners confess, they would transfer them to the hot unit. The chewing unit dealt with tough and important cases. Those who worked as interrogators were literate and usually in their 20s.
Some of the staff who worked in Tuol Sleng also ended up as prisoners. They confessed to being lazy in preparing documents, to having damaged machines and various equipment, and to having beaten prisoners to death without permission when assisting with interrogations.
When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:
You must answer accordingly to my question. Don't turn them away.
Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
If you don't follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
During testimony at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal on April 27, 2009, Duch claimed the 10 security regulations were a fabrication of the Vietnamese officials that first set up the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
In 1979, Hồ Văn Tây, a Vietnamese combat photographer, was the first journalist to document Tuol Sleng to the world. Hồ and his colleagues followed the stench of rotting corpses to the gates of Tuol Sleng. The photos of Hồ documenting what he saw when he entered the site are exhibited in Tuol Sleng today.
The Khmer Rouge required that the prison staff make a detailed dossier for each prisoner. Included in the documentation was a photograph. Since the original negatives and photographs were separated from the dossiers in the 1979–1980 period, most of the photographs remain anonymous to this day.
The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved, with some rooms still appearing just as they were when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. The regime kept extensive records, including thousands of photographs. Several rooms of the museum are now lined, floor to ceiling, with black and white photographs of some of the estimated 20,000 prisoners who passed through the prison.
The site has four main buildings, known as Building A, B, C, and D. Building A holds the large cells in which the bodies of the last victims were discovered. Building B holds galleries of photographs. Building C holds the rooms subdivided into small cells for prisoners. Building D holds other memorabilia including instruments of torture.
Other rooms contain only a rusting iron bedframe, beneath a black and white photograph showing the room as it was found by the Vietnamese. In each photograph, the mutilated body of a prisoner is chained to the bed, killed by his fleeing captors only hours before the prison was captured. Other rooms preserve leg-irons and instruments of torture. They are accompanied by paintings by former inmate Vann Nath showing people being tortured, which were added by the post-Khmer Rouge regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.
The museum is open to the public from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. On weekdays, visitors have the opportunity of viewing a 'survivor testimony' from 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Along with the Choeung Ek Memorial (the Killing Fields), the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is included as a point of interest for those visiting Cambodia. Tuol Sleng also remains an important educational site as well as memorial for Cambodians. Since 2010, the ECCC brings Cambodians on a 'study tour' consisting of the Tuol Sleng, followed by the Choeung Ek, and finishing at the ECCC complex. The tour drew approximately 27,000 visitors in 2010.
S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a 2003 film by Rithy Panh, a Cambodian-born, French-trained filmmaker who lost his family when he was 11. The film features two Tuol Sleng survivors, Vann Nath and Chum Mey, confronting their former Khmer Rouge captors, including guards, interrogators, a doctor and a photographer. The focus of the film is the difference between the feelings of the survivors, who want to understand what happened at Tuol Sleng to warn future generations, and the former jailers, who cannot escape the horror of the genocide they helped create.
A number of images from Tuol Sleng are featured in the 1992 Ron Fricke film Baraka.
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than 1,000,000 people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during Khmer Rouge rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings were part of the broad, state-sponsored Cambodian genocide.
Analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites by the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University indicates at least 1,386,734 victims of execution. Estimates of the total deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including death from disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, ending the genocide.
The Cambodian journalist Dith Pran coined the term "killing fields" after his escape from the regime.
The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, Cambodian Christians, and Buddhist monks were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot has been described as "a genocidal tyrant". Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".
Ben Kiernan estimates that about 1.7 million people were killed. Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution". A United Nations investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed. Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed, while Marek Sliwinski suggests that 1.8 million is a conservative figure. Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion. By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot", who were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.
Process
The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education," which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." They were then taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.[citation needed]
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison or improvised weapons such as sharpened bamboo sticks, hammers, machetes and axes. Inside the Buddhist Memorial Stupa at Choeung Ek, there is evidence of bayonets, knives, wooden clubs, hoes for farming and curved scythes being used to kill victims, with images of skulls, damaged by these implements, as evidence. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents. The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths."[citation needed]
Prosecution for crimes against humanity
In 1997 the Cambodian government asked for the UN's assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. It took nine years to agree to the shape and structure of the court—a hybrid of Cambodian and international laws—before the judges were sworn in, in 2006. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He faced Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal and was convicted on 7 August 2014 and received a life sentence. On 26 July 2010 Kang Kek Iew (aka Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 19 years, as he had already spent 11 years in prison. On 2 February 2012, his sentence was extended to life imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. He died on 2 September 2020.
Legacy
The best known monument of the Killing Fields is at the village of Choeung Ek. Today, it is the site of a Buddhist memorial to the victims, and Tuol Sleng has a museum commemorating the genocide. The memorial park at Choeung Ek has been built around the mass graves of many thousands of victims, most of whom were executed after interrogation at the S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh. The majority of those buried at Choeung Ek were Khmer Rouge killed during the purges within the regime. Many dozens of mass graves are visible above ground, many which have not been excavated yet. Commonly, bones and clothing surface after heavy rainfalls due to the large number of bodies still buried in shallow mass graves. It is not uncommon to run across the bones or teeth of the victims scattered on the surface as one tours the memorial park. If these are found, visitors are asked to notify a memorial park officer or guide.
A survivor of the genocide, Dara Duong, founded The Killing Fields Museum in Seattle, US.
The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.
The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk following the CCP's advice after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Despite a massive American bombing campaign (Operation Freedom Deal) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan, immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivization similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria.
The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of its forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the Communist Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989. The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United Nations seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.
In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had long been supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge's policies, including 200,000–300,000 Chinese Cambodians, 90,000–500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim), and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians. 20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated, and only seven adults survived. The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease.
The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In 2003, by agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge Tribunal) were established to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began in 2009. On 26 July 2010, the Trial Chamber convicted Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Supreme Court Chamber increased his sentence to life imprisonment. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were tried and convicted in 2014 of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. On 28 March 2019, the Trial Chamber found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide of the Vietnamese ethnic, national and racial group. The Chamber additionally convicted Nuon Chea of genocide of the Cham ethnic and religious group under the doctrine of superior responsibility. Both Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment.
As soon as I saw the repeating colours and shapes of this farm implement in a rural folk museum, I knew I had my image to fit the theme 'Pattern'.
A 2 day adventure in Northwest Washington State.
Mount Vernon, WA smoke stack is a remnant of the former Carnation Milk Condensery, currently the Condensery Building, built by Elbridge A. Stuart in 1906.
The purpose of the condensery was to convert cow’s milk which spoiled easily, into canned, condensed milk.
The process included boiling off some of the water contained in the milk, and adding sugar as a preservative to prepare the milk for canning.
The process required huge amounts of steam to be released, and the smoke stack was built for that purpose.
Today, the smoke stack is a symbol that pays tribute to the fertile farmlands and the tulip fields the Skagit Valley is known for..
The stack was first painted in 1987 with design by Esther and painted by Jose Cordona.
By 2007 deterioration of the upper part of the structure had created a sufficient public safety hazard to cause its then owners, the Potin Revocable Trust of Blaine, to consider either its demolition or cropping the top 30 feet of the former smokestack.
Thankfully, they chose the latter option — but with the resulting loss of the original painted tulips.
Once again Esther McLatchy did a redesign and Jose Cardona, owner of Cardona & Sons Painting, volunteered much of one weekend to implementing the design, with the aid of a boom truck provided by Birch Equipment.
Long story short, I basically wanted to build something around the steering and piston pieces from old Technic sets. I've also implemented a pull-back motor, because why not?
Shout-out to the following sets:
75870 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (2016)
Check the other pictures out in the Duplo Drifter album!
So, the new federal carbon tax was implemented today, I was hoping it was going to be an April Fool's joke but apparently not. Right now it seems to have raised gas prices by about 5 cents per litre in Ontario and we can expect that expense to more than double in a few years over the life of its implementation. We will see how the tax affects the costs to heat our homes and how over the long term it also increases the already rapidly rising costs of everyday goods such as groceries and clothing. One thing is for sure, everyone is definitely going to less spending power with these new taxes, the coming October federal election cannot come soon enough.
So apparently the manufacturing of cement accounts for 8% of the world's CO2 emissions, 900 kg of CO2 are emitted for the fabrication of every ton of cement, yet this a topic that never seems to come up when talking about climate change. There is also the issue of concrete demolition which releases harmful dusts into the air, not to mention that some concrete was also created with asbestos embedded into the mixture. Everyone is so environmentally conscious but when it comes to ripping down buildings they don't even think twice.
So my question is, why does this 11 storey office tower need to torn down in the first place, could it not be repurposed into the new development?
As I was setting up my camera to take this photo a guy walked passed me, he didn't see me so I watched him to see what he was doing. He went inside the shell of the building and a few minutes later I could hear the sound of a grinder, he was one of the many copper thieves I have encountered while visiting these places. He was not at all aware of my presence even when standing only feet away from him, he was working just behind the pile of rubble that I was standing on while taking this photo.
Standing in front of an 11 storey office tower being torn down in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
©James Hackland
- www.kevin-palmer.com - The Ewing Snell Ranch is another historic ranch from the late 1800's that is part of Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.
Shot with my D600 and 14-24 Nikor Wide Angle Lens at my friends farm. Post processed in Lightroom and HDR'd in Photomatix Pro. I have a few more that I will upload later, but this is by far my favorite shot.
And as I promised, the last plate I created on that day was appropriately one of my hands at the end of the process. When you coat the plates you hold them like a waiter holds a drink tray and you pour the collodion onto the plate and tilt the plate toward all four corners to spread the mixture. Invariably (regularly if you are a beginner) some of it dribbles off and onto your hand. Then when you pull the plate from the silver nitrate bath, some of that silver nitrate gets onto your hands and mixes with the collodion that is on there, creating a light sensitive emulsion on your skin which immediately gets exposed to light. Finally when you take your exposed plate into the darkroom and pour developer over it, that developer spills off onto your hands and develops the emulsion on them, which at this point are incredibly over-exposed and turn black. It wears off in a day or two, but til then you have some nicely stained hands.
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a wet plate image of my wet plate stained hands. The results of the process documented by the process. There is a nice logic to that.
A tractor dragging a simple implement reconditions the soil surface for barrel racing. The device serves to break up dirt clumps and compacted areas in order to even up the dirt surface. Regular conditioning occurs between every 5 contestants.
An interested spectator (not a contestant) astride a horse watches the action.
Photo taken at the equestrian arena at the John Volken Academy in Gilbert, Arizona.
Antique Farm Implement,
Penn Farm Agricultural Heritage Center.
Cedar Hill State Park. Cedar Hill, Texas.
Dallas County. 24 December 2018.
Olympus E-P5. Panasonic Lumix G Vario 45-200mm f/4-5.6 II.
(45mm) f/8 @ 1/100 sec. ISO 200.
Warchief, everything is set as you ordered! The enemy ships just docked and they are unloading the troops. They will be here in an hour.- reported commander of the scouts.
Burlogh O'Rohal let out a sigh. For some reason I hoped they change their mind. - So it is decreeded. Stay calm and follow my orders.
Scouts of Lenfald army road into the valley. Suddenly a band of cheering beastman jumped out from the woods and ran towards them. Commander of the cavalry ordered a charge. The beastman group seemed confused and started to flee. Everything went as the warchief planned. The knights followed the Ironclad Company but after the turn of the road they faced a troll phalanx. Their charge broke in a minute. The beastmen turned back and flanked the cavalry.
Meanwhile main force of the invaders faced some problem too. Magical song rang over the valley as combined power of shamans created huge flamesnakes. As the fire stroke down to the knights, a sniper rose up from his hiding spot. His first shot hit the Lenfald commander who fall down to the ground. His army became disorganised in a moment. The ground shaked as Dragon Maiden lead their charge. The Lenfald army was surrounded in a few minutes. Their only chance was the road, but it was blocked by the warchief himself.
Let the massacre begin! For freedom, for the Bleeding Claws! - roared Burlogh and started to run and the horde followed him...
My entry to Lands of Classic Castle Global Challenge 3 - Purging the Magic Islands