Bouncer (doorman)
A bouncer is a type of security guard, employed at venues such as bars, stripclubs, hotels, billiard halls, sporting events or concerts. A bouncer's duties are to provide security, to check legal age, to refuse entry for intoxicated persons, to deal with aggressive behavior or non-compliance with statutory or establishment rules, they are civilians and they are hired directly by the venue, rather than by a security firm. Bouncers are required where crowd size, clientele or alcohol consumption may make arguments or fights a possibility, or where the threat or presence of criminal gang activity or violence is high. In the United States, civil liability and court costs related to the use of force by bouncers are "the highest preventable loss found within the industry", as many United States bouncers are taken to court and other countries have similar problems of excessive force. In many countries, federal or state governments have taken steps to professionalise the industry by requiring bouncers to have training, a criminal records background check.
Other terms include "cooler" and "door supervisor" in the UK. In a US bar, the "cooler" is the head of a team of bouncers. In the UK, the terms "floor man", "floor person" or "cooler" may all be used for the bouncer role. In the 1990s and 2000s, increased awareness of the risks of lawsuits and criminal charges have led many bars and venues to train their bouncers to use communication and conflict resolution skills before, or rather than, resorting to brute force against troublemakers. However, the earlier history of the occupation suggests that the stereotype of bouncers as rough, physical enforcers has indeed been the case in many countries and cultures throughout history. Historical references suggest that the'doorman' function of guarding a place and selecting who can have entry to it could at times be an honorific and evolve into a important position; the significance of the doorman as the person allowing entry is found in a number of Mesopotamian myths, including that of Nergal overcoming the seven doormen guarding the gates to the Underworld.
In 1 Chronicles 26 of the Old Testament, the Levitical Temple is described as having a number of'gatekeepers'—amongst their duties are "protect the temple from theft", from "illegal entry into sacred areas" and "maintain order", all functions they share with the modern concept of the bouncer, though the described temple servants serve as holy persons and administrators themselves. Doormen or bouncers are larger persons who display great strength and size; the Romans had a position known as the ostiarius a slave, who guarded the door, sometimes ejected unwanted people from the house whose gate he guarded. The term become a low-ranking clergy title. Plautus, in his play Bacchides, mentions a "large and powerful" doorman / bouncer as a threat to get an unwelcome visitor to leave. Tertullian, an early Christian author living in the 1st century AD, while reporting on the casual oppression of Christians in Carthage, noted that bouncers were counted as part of a semi-legal underworld, amongst other'shady' characters such as gamblers and pimps.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, US saloon-keepers and brothel madams hired bouncers to remove troublesome, violent, or dead-drunk patrons, to protect the saloon girls and prostitutes. The word "bouncer" was first popularized in a novel by Horatio Alger, called The Young Outlaw, first published in 1875. Alger was an immensely popular author in the 19th century with young people and his books were quoted. In Chapter XIV, entitled "Bounced", a boy is thrown out of a restaurant because he has no money to pay for his dinner: "Here, you waited on this young man, didn't you?" "Yes, sir." "He hasn't paid for his breakfast, pretends he hasn't got any money. Bounce him!" If Sam was ignorant of the meaning of the word'bounce,' he was soon enlightened. The waiter seized him by the collar, before he knew what was going to happen, pushed him to the door, lifting his foot by a well-directed kick, landed him across the sidewalk into the street; this proceeding was followed by derisive laughter from the other waiters who had gathered near the door, it was echoed by two street urchins outside, who witnessed Sam's ignominious exit from the restaurant.
Sam staggered from the force of the bouncing, felt disgraced and humiliated to think that the waiter, so respectful and attentive should have inflicted upon him such an indignity, which he had no power to resent. An 1883 newspaper article stated that "'The Bouncer' is the English'chucker out'; when liberty verges on license and gaiety on wanton delirium, the Bouncer selects the gayest of the gay, and—bounces him!" In US Western towns in the 1870s, high-class brothels known as "good houses" or "parlour houses" hired bouncers for security and to prevent patrons from evading payment. "Good house"-style brothels "... considered themselves the cream of the crop, scorned those who worked in saloons, dance halls, theatres." The best bordellos looked like respectable mansions, with attractively decorated parlours, a game room and a dance hall. For security, "somewhere in every parlor house there was always a bouncer, a giant of a man who stayed sober to handle any customer who got too rough with one of the girls o
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, anthologized work, it is distinguished from the term "comic book", used for comics periodicals. Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term "graphic novel" in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha; the term gained popularity in the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God and the start of Marvel's Graphic Novel line and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1986 and the collected editions of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using "graphic novel" as a category in book stores in 2001; the term is not defined, though Merriam-Webster's full dictionary definition is "a fictional story, presented in comic-strip format and published as a book", while its simplest definition is given as "cartoon drawings that tell a story and are published as a book".
In the publishing trade, the term extends to material that would not be considered a novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as "graphic novels"; the term is sometimes used to distinguish between works created as standalone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form. In continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as La rivolta dei racchi by Guido Buzzelli, collections of comics have been published in hardcover volumes called "albums", since the end of the 19th century; as the exact definition of the graphic novel is debated, the origins of the form are open to interpretation. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end, it originated as the 1828 publication Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, was first published in English translation in 1841 by London's Tilt & Bogue, which used an 1833 Paris pirate edition.
The first American edition was published in 1842 by Wilson & Company in New York City using the original printing plates from the 1841 edition. Another early predecessor is Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by brothers J. A. D. and D. F. Read, inspired by The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. In 1894 Caran d'Ache broached the idea of a "drawn novel" in a letter to the newspaper Le Figaro and started work on a 360-page wordless book. In the United States there is a long tradition of reissuing published comic strips in book form. In 1897 the Hearst Syndicate published such a collection of The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault and it became a best seller; the 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. His works include Passionate Journey. American Lynd Ward worked in this tradition, publishing Gods' Man, in 1929 and going on to publish more during the 1930s. Other prototypical examples from this period include American Milt Gross's He Done Her Wrong, a wordless comic published as a hardcover book, Une semaine de bonté, a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst.
Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater? Combines images and captions; the 1940s saw the launching of Classics Illustrated, a comic-book series that adapted notable, public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. In 1947 Fawcett Comics published Comics Novel #1: "Anarcho, Dictator of Death", a 52-page comic dedicated to one story. In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust, a film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller", penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab. Presaging Will Eisner's multiple-story graphic novel A Contract with God, cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman wrote and drew the four-story mass-market paperback Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book, published in 1959.
By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page, magazine-format comics novel, His Name Is... Savage in 1968—the same year Marvel Comics published two issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Columnist and comic-book writer Steven Grant argues that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange story in Strange Tales #130–146, although published serially from 1965–1966, is "the first American graphic novel". Critic Jason Sacks referred to the 13-issue "Panther's Rage"—comics' first-known titled, self-contained, multi-issue story arc—that ran from 1973 to 1975 in the Black Panther series in Marvel's Jungle Action as "Marvel's first graphic novel". Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting ser
William Wallace
Sir William Wallace was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence. Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297, he was appointed Guardian of Scotland and served until his defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in July 1298. In August 1305, Wallace was captured in Robroyston, near Glasgow, handed over to King Edward I of England, who had him hanged and quartered for high treason and crimes against English civilians. Since his death, Wallace has obtained an iconic status far beyond his homeland, he is the protagonist of Blind Harry's 15th-century epic poem The Wallace and the subject of literary works by Sir Walter Scott and Jane Porter, of the Academy Award-winning film Braveheart. He was first cousin to Roger de Kirkpatrick. Roger himself was a third cousin to Robert the Bruce. William Wallace was a member of the lesser nobility, but little is known of his family history or his parentage.
Blind Harry's late-15th-century poem gives his father as Sir Malcolm of Elderslie. This Alan Wallace may be the same as the one listed in the 1296 Ragman Rolls as a crown tenant in Ayrshire, but there is no additional confirmation. Blind Harry's assertion that William was the son of Sir Malcolm of Elderslie has given rise to a tradition that William's birthplace was at Elderslie in Renfrewshire, this is still the view of some historians, including the historical William Wallace Society itself. However, William's seal has given rise to a counter claim of Ellerslie in Ayrshire. There is no contemporary evidence linking him with either location, although both areas had connections with the wider Wallace family. Records show early members of the family as holding estates at Riccarton and Auchincruive in Kyle, Stenton in East Lothian, they were vassals of James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland as their lands fell within his territory. Wallace's brothers John are known from other sources; the origins of the Wallace surname and its association with southwest Scotland are far from certain, other than the name's being derived from the Old English wylisc, meaning "foreigner" or "Welshman".
It is possible that all the Wallaces in the Clyde area were medieval immigrants from Wales, but as the term was used for local Cumbric-speaking Strathclyde Welsh, it seems likely that the surname refers to people who were seen as being "Welsh" due to their Cumbric language. When Wallace was growing up, King Alexander III ruled Scotland, his reign had seen a period of peace and economic stability. On 19 March 1286, Alexander died after falling from his horse; the heir to the throne was Alexander's granddaughter, Maid of Norway. As she was still a child and in Norway, the Scottish lords set up a government of guardians. Margaret fell ill on the voyage to Scotland and died in Orkney on 26 September 1290; the lack of a clear heir led to a period known as the "Great Cause", with several families laying claim to the throne. With Scotland threatening to descend into civil war, King Edward I of England was invited in by the Scottish nobility to arbitrate. Before the process could begin, he insisted that all of the contenders recognise him as Lord Paramount of Scotland.
In early November 1292, at a great feudal court held in the castle at Berwick-upon-Tweed, judgment was given in favour of John Balliol having the strongest claim in law. Edward proceeded to reverse the rulings of the Scottish Lords and summoned King John Balliol to stand before the English court as a common plaintiff. John was a weak king, known as "Toom Tabard" or "Empty Coat". John renounced his homage in March 1296 and by the end of the month Edward stormed Berwick-upon-Tweed, sacking the then-Scottish border town. In April, the Scots were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar in East Lothian and by July, Edward had forced John to abdicate. Edward instructed his officers to receive formal homage from some 1,800 Scottish nobles; some historians, such as Andrew Fisher, believe Wallace must have had some earlier military experience in order to lead a successful military campaign in 1297. Campaigns like Edward I of England's wars in Wales might have provided a good opportunity for a younger son of a landholder to become a mercenary soldier.
Wallace's personal seal bears the archer's insignia, so he may have fought as an archer in Edward's army. Walter Bower states that Wallace was "a tall man with the body of a giant... with lengthy flanks... broad in the hips, with strong arms and legs... with all his limbs strong and firm". Blind Harry's Wallace reaches seven feet; the first act known to have been carried out by Wallace was his assassination of William de Heselrig, the English High Sheriff of Lanark, in May 1297. He joined with William the Hardy, Lord of Douglas, they carried out the raid of Scone; this was one of several rebellions taking place across Scotland, including those of several Scottish nobles and Andrew Moray in the north. The uprising suffered a blow. Wallace and Moray were not involved, continued their rebellions. Wallace used the Ettrick Forest as a base for raiding, attacked Wishart's palace at Ancrum. Wallace and Moray met and joined their forces at the siege of Dundee in early September. On 11 September 1297, an army jointly led by Wallace and Andrew Moray won the Battle of Stirling Bridge
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome, with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, a prize; the outcome of the wager is immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or an entire sports season. The term "gaming" in this context refers to instances in which the activity has been permitted by law; the two words are not mutually exclusive. However, this distinction is not universally observed in the English-speaking world. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the regulator of gambling activities is called the Gambling Commission; the word gaming is used more since the rise of computer and video games to describe activities that do not involve wagering online gaming, with the new usage still not having displaced the old usage as the primary definition in common dictionaries.
Gambling is a major international commercial activity, with the legal gambling market totaling an estimated $335 billion in 2009. In other forms, gambling can be conducted with materials which are not real money. For example, players of marbles games might wager marbles, games of Pogs or Magic: The Gathering can be played with the collectible game pieces as stakes, resulting in a meta-game regarding the value of a player's collection of pieces. Gambling dates back before written history. In Mesopotamia the earliest six-sided dice date to about 3000 BC. However, they were based on astragali dating back thousands of years earlier. In China, gambling houses were widespread in the first millennium BC, betting on fighting animals was common. Lotto games and dominoes appeared in China as early as the 10th century. Playing cards appeared in the ninth century in China. Records trace gambling in Japan back at least as far as the 14th century. Poker, the most popular U. S. card game associated with gambling, derives from the Persian game As-Nas, dating back to the 17th century.
The first known casino, the Ridotto, started operating in 1638 in Italy. Many jurisdictions, local as well as national, either ban gambling or control it by licensing the vendors; such regulation leads to gambling tourism and illegal gambling in the areas where it is not allowed. The involvement of governments, through regulation and taxation, has led to a close connection between many governments and gaming organizations, where legal gambling provides significant government revenue, such as in Monaco or Macau, China. There is legislation requiring that the odds in gaming devices be statistically random, to prevent manufacturers from making some high-payoff results impossible. Since these high-payoffs have low probability, a house bias can quite be missed unless the odds are checked carefully. Most jurisdictions that allow gambling require participants to be above a certain age. In some jurisdictions, the gambling age differs depending on the type of gambling. For example, in many American states one must be over 21 to enter a casino, but may buy a lottery ticket after turning 18.
Because contracts of insurance have many features in common with wagers, insurance contracts are distinguished under law as agreements in which either party has an interest in the "bet-upon" outcome beyond the specific financial terms. E.g.: a "bet" with an insurer on whether one's house will burn down is not gambling, but rather insurance – as the homeowner has an obvious interest in the continued existence of his/her home independent of the purely financial aspects of the "bet". Nonetheless, both insurance and gambling contracts are considered aleatory contracts under most legal systems, though they are subject to different types of regulation. Under common law English Law, a gambling contract may not give a casino bona fide purchaser status, permitting the recovery of stolen funds in some situations. In Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd, where a solicitor used stolen funds to gamble at a casino, the House of Lords overruled the High Court's previous verdict, adjudicating that the casino return the stolen funds less those subject to any change of position defence.
U. S. Law precedents are somewhat similar. For case law on recovery of gambling losses where the loser had stolen the funds see "Rights of owner of stolen money as against one who won it in gambling transaction from thief". An interesting wrinkle to these fact pattern is to ask what happens when the person trying to make recovery is the gambler's spouse, the money or property lost was either the spouse's, or was community property; this was a minor plot point in a Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Singing Skirt, it cites an actual case Novo v. Hotel Del Rio. Ancient Hindu poems like the Gambler's Lament and the Mahabharata testify to the popularity of gambling among ancient Indians. However, the text Arthashastra recommends control of gambling. Ancient Jewish authorities frowned on gambling disqualifying professional gamblers from testifying in court; the Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all bettors have a reasonable chance of winni
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom, described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The party's platform emphasises greater state intervention, social justice and strengthening workers' rights; the Labour Party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940-1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfare state from 1945 to 1951. Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Labour again governed from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1979. In the 1990s Tony Blair took Labour closer to the centre as part of his "New Labour" project, which governed the UK under Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010.
After Corbyn took over in 2015, the party has moved leftward. Labour is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, having won the second-largest number of seats in the 2017 general election; the Labour Party is the largest party in the Welsh Assembly, forming the main party in the current Welsh government. The party is the third largest in the Scottish Parliament. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, holds observer status in the Socialist International, sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament; the party includes semi-autonomous Scottish and Welsh branches and supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland. As of 2017, Labour had the largest membership of any party in Western Europe; the Labour Party originated in the late 19th century, meeting the demand for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban working class, a demographic which had increased in number, many of whom only gained suffrage with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1884.
Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. The first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. At the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardie's roots as a lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party which led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that "Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx".
In 1899, a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all left-wing organisations and form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates; the motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, the proposed conference was held at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street on 26 and 27 February 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations—trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates. After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, meant to co-ordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population.
It had no single leader, in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united; the October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored. Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike; the judgement made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative Government of Arthur Balfour to industrial and business interests intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared to have little concern for the industrial proletariat and its problems. In the 1906 election, the LRC won 29 seats—helped by a secret 1903 pact between Ramsay MacDonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone that aimed to avoid splitting the opposition vote between Labour and Liberal candidates in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office.
In their first meeting after the election the group's Members of Parliament decided to adop
Battle of the Alamo
The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna reclaimed the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar, killing the Texian and immigrant occupiers. Santa Anna's cruelty during the battle inspired many Texians, both legal Texas settlers and illegal immigrants from the United States, to join the Texian Army. Buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the rebellion. Several months Texians had driven all Mexican troops out of Mexican Texas. About 100 Texians were garrisoned at the Alamo; the Texian force grew with the arrival of reinforcements led by eventual Alamo co-commanders James Bowie and William B. Travis. On February 23 1,500 Mexicans marched into San Antonio de Béxar as the first step in a campaign to retake Texas. For the next 10 days, the two armies engaged in several skirmishes with minimal casualties.
Aware that his garrison could not withstand an attack by such a large force, Travis wrote multiple letters pleading for more men and supplies from Texas and from the United States, but the Texians were reinforced by fewer than 100 men because the United States had a treaty with Mexico, supplying men and weapons would have been an overt act of war. In the early morning hours of March 6, the Mexican Army advanced on the Alamo. After repelling two attacks, the Texians were unable to fend off a third attack; as Mexican soldiers scaled the walls, most of the Texian fighters withdrew into interior buildings. Occupiers unable to reach these points were slain by the Mexican cavalry as they attempted to escape. Between five and seven Texians may have surrendered. Most eyewitness accounts reported between 182 and 257 Texians died, while most historians of the Alamo agree that around 600 Mexicans were killed or wounded. Several noncombatants were sent to Gonzales to spread word of the Texian defeat; the news sparked both a strong rush to join the Texian army and a panic, known as "The Runaway Scrape", in which the Texian army, most settlers, the new, self-proclaimed but unrecognized, Republic of Texas government fled eastward toward the United States ahead of the advancing Mexican Army.
Within Mexico, the battle has been overshadowed by events from the Mexican–American War of 1846–48. In 19th-century Texas, the Alamo complex became known as a battle site rather than a former mission; the Texas Legislature purchased the land and buildings in the early part of the 20th century and designated the Alamo chapel as an official Texas State Shrine. The Alamo has been the subject of numerous non-fiction works beginning in 1843. Most Americans, are more familiar with the myths and legends spread by many of the movie and television adaptations, including the 1950s Disney mini-series Davy Crockett and John Wayne's 1960 film The Alamo. In 1835, there was a drastic shift in the Mexican nation; the triumph of conservative forces in the elections unleashed a series of events that culminated on October 23, 1835, under a new constitution, after the repeal of the federalist Constitution of 1824. Las Siete Leyes (Spanish:, or Seven Laws were a series of constitutional changes that fundamentally altered the organizational structure of Mexico, ending the first federal period and creating a unitary republic the Mexican Republic.
Formalized under President Antonio López de Santa Anna on 15 December 1835, they were enacted in 1836. They were intended to strengthen the national government; the aim of the previous constitution was to create a political system that would emulate the success of the United States, but after a decade of political turmoil, economic stagnation, threats and actual foreign invasion, conservatives concluded that a better path for Mexico was centralized power. The new policies, the increased enforcement of immigration laws and import tariffs, incited many immigrants to revolt; the border region of Mexican Texas was populated by immigrants from the United States, some legal but most illegal. These people were accustomed to a federalist government and to extensive individual rights, they were quite vocal in their displeasure at Mexico's law enforcement and shift towards centralism. Suspicious after previous American attempts to purchase Mexican Texas, Mexican authorities blamed much of the Texian unrest on American immigrants, most of whom had entered illegally and made little effort to adapt to the Mexican culture.
In October, Texians engaged Mexican troops in the first official battle of the Texas Revolution. Determined to quell the rebellion of immigrants, Santa Anna began assembling a large force, the Army of Operations in Texas, to restore order. Most of his soldiers were raw recruits, a large number had been forcibly conscripted; the Texians systematically defeated the Mexican troops stationed in Texas. The last group of Mexican soldiers in the region—commanded by Santa Anna's brother-in-law, General Martín Perfecto de Cos—surrendered on December 9 following the siege of Béxar. By this point, the Texian Army was dominated by recent arrivals to the region illegal immigrants from the United States. Many Texas settlers, unprepared for a long campaign, had returned home. Angered by what he perceived to be American interference in Mexican affairs, Santa Anna spearheaded a resolution classifying foreign immigrants found fighting in Texas as pirates; the resolution banned the taking of prisoners of war: in this period of time, captured pirates were executed immediately
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction set in a fictional universe inspired by real world myth and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which became literature and drama. From the twentieth century it has expanded further into various media, including film, graphic novels and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes though these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Most fantasy uses other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent; this differs from realistic fiction in that realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, where fantasy does not.
An author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters and settings that are impossible in reality. Many fantasy authors use real-world mythology as inspiration. For instance, a narrative that takes place in an imagined town in the northeastern United States could be considered realistic fiction as long as the plot and characters are consistent with the history of a region and the natural characteristics that someone, to the northeastern United States expects. Fantasy has been compared to science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements. A science fiction narrative is unlikely, though possible through logical scientific or technological extrapolation, where fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. Authors have to rely on the readers' suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment, in order to write effective fantasies.
Despite both genres' heavy reliance on the supernatural and horror are distinguishable. Horror evokes fear through the protagonists' weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were a part of literature from its beginning. Fantasy elements occur throughout the ancient Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh; the ancient Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Eliš, in which the god Marduk slays the goddess Tiamat, contains the theme of a cosmic battle between good and evil, characteristic of the modern fantasy genre. Genres of romantic and fantasy literature existed in ancient Egypt; the Tales of the Court of King Khufu, preserved in the Westcar Papyrus and was written in the middle of the second half of the eighteenth century BC, preserves a mixture of stories with elements of historical fiction and satire. Egyptian funerary texts preserve mythological tales, the most significant of which are the myths of Osiris and his son Horus. Folk tales with fantastic elements intended for adults were a major genre of ancient Greek literature.
The comedies of Aristophanes are filled with fantastic elements his play The Birds, in which an Athenian man builds a city in the clouds with the birds and challenges Zeus's authority. Ovid's Metamorphoses and Apuleius's The Golden Ass are both works that influenced the development of the fantasy genre by taking mythic elements and weaving them into personal accounts. Both works involve complex narratives in which humans beings are transformed into animals or inanimate objects. Platonic teachings and early Christian theology are major influences on the modern fantasy genre. Plato used allegories to convey many of his teachings, early Christian writers interpreted both the Old and New Testaments as employing parables to relay spiritual truths; this ability to find meaning in a story, not true became the foundation that allowed the modern fantasy genre to develop. The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, a compilation of many ancient and medieval folk tales.
Various characters from this epic have become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba. Hindu mythology was an evolution of the earlier Vedic mythology and had many more fantastical stories and characters in the Indian epics; the Panchatantra, for example, used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate the central Indian principles of political science. Chinese traditions have been influential in the vein of fantasy known as Chinoiserie, including such writers as Ernest Bramah and Barry Hughart. Beowulf is among the best known of the Nordic tales in the English speaking world, has had deep influence on the fantasy genre. Norse mythology, as found in the Elder Edda and the Younger Edda, includes such figures as Odin and his fellow Aesir, dwarves, elves and giants; these elements have been directly imported into various fantasy works. The separate folklore of Ireland and Scotland has sometimes been us
