Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, drummer Brad Wilk, their songs express revolutionary political views. As of 2010, they had sold over 16 million records worldwide; the band was nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility in 2017 and 2018, although both bids failed. Rage Against the Machine released its eponymous debut album in 1992 to commercial and critical success, leading to a slot in the 1993 Lollapalooza festival; the follow-up albums, Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angeles, were successful. During their initial nine-year run, Rage Against the Machine became one of the most popular and influential bands in music history, had a large influence on the nu metal genre which came to prominence during the second half of the 1990s, they were ranked No. 33 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.
In 2000, Rage Against the Machine released the cover album Renegades and disbanded after growing creative differences led to De la Rocha's departure. De la Rocha started a low-key solo career, while the rest of the band formed the rock supergroup Audioslave with Chris Cornell, the former frontman of Soundgarden; the same year, Rage Against the Machine announced a reunion and performed together for the first time in seven years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2007. Within the next four years, minus a sabbatical in 2009, the band continued to perform at more live venues and festivals around the world before going on hiatus once again. In 2016, Morello and Wilk formed a new band, Prophets of Rage, with B-Real, Chuck D, DJ Lord. After an eight-year hiatus, Rage Against the Machine announced in November 2019 that they were reuniting for a tour in 2020. In 1991, following the break-up of guitarist Tom Morello's former band Lock Up, former Lock Up drummer Jon Knox encouraged Tim Commerford and Zack de la Rocha to jam with Tom Morello as he was looking to start a new group.
Morello soon contacted Brad Wilk, who had unsuccessful auditions for both Lock Up and the band that would become Pearl Jam. This lineup named themselves Rage Against the Machine, after a song de la Rocha had written for his former underground hardcore punk band Inside Out. Kent McClard, with whom Inside Out were associated, had coined the phrase "rage against the machine" in a 1989 article in his zine No Answers. Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance on October 23, 1991, at the Quad of California State University, Northridge; the blueprint for the group's major-label debut album, demo tape Rage Against the Machine, was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which featured newspaper clippings of the stockmarket section with a single match taped to the inlay card. Not all 12 songs made it onto the final album—two were included as B-sides, while three others never saw an official release. Several record labels expressed interest, the band signed with Epic Records.
Morello said, "Epic agreed to everything we asked—and they've followed through... We never saw a conflict as long as we maintained creative control." The band's debut album, Rage Against the Machine, reached triple platinum status, driven by heavy radio play of the song "Killing in the Name", a heavy, driving track featuring only eight lines of lyrics. The "Fuck You" version, which contains 17 iterations of the word fuck, was once accidentally played on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show on February 21, 1993; the album's cover featured Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by the U. S.-backed Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm's regime. The album was produced by Garth Richardson. To promote the album, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza 1993 and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe. After their debut album, the band appeared on the soundtrack for the film Higher Learning with the song "Year of tha Boomerang".
An early version of "Tire Me" appeared in the movie. Subsequently, they re-recorded the song "Darkness" from their original demo for the soundtrack of The Crow, while "No Shelter" appeared on the Godzilla soundtrack. Despite rumors of a breakup for several years, Rage Against the Machine's second album, Evil Empire, entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at number one in 1996, subsequently rose to triple platinum status; the song "Bulls on Parade" was performed on Saturday Night Live in April 1996. Their planned two-song performance was cut to one song when the band attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers, a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night. In 1997, the band opened for U2 on their PopMart Tour, for which all of Rage's profits went to support social organizations, including U. N. I. T. E. Women Alive and the Zapatista Front for National Liberation. Rage subsequently began an abortive headlining U. S. tour with special guests Wu-Tang Clan.
Police in several jurisdictions unsuccessfully attempted to have the concerts cancelled, citing amongst other reasons, the bands' "violent
The Ancient Forest Alliance is a grassroots environmental organization in British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in January, 2010, is dedicated to protecting British Columbia's old growth forests in areas where they are scarce, ensuring sustainable forestry jobs in that province; the objectives of the Ancient Forest Alliance, as stated on their website, are to: Undertake a Provincial Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory the old-growth forests in BC and protect them where they are scarce Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which now constitute the majority of forest lands in southern BC. End the export of BC raw logs to foreign mills in order to ensure a guaranteed log supply for BC mills and value-added processing facilities. Assist in the retooling and development of BC coastal sawmills and value-added facilities to handle second-growth logs. Undertake new, democratic land-use planning processes to protect endangered forests based on new First Nations land-use plans, ecosystem-based scientific assessments, climate mitigation strategies through forest protection.
The Ancient Forest Alliance was founded in January 2010 by former Western Canada Wilderness Committee activists Ken Wu, TJ Watt, Tara Sawatsky, along with old-growth activists Katrina Andres and Brendan Harry from Victoria and Michelle Connolly from Vancouver. The founders were prompted to start the new organization when the Western Canada Wilderness Committee announced in late 2009 that it was both closing its Victoria storefront and reorganizing its Victoria office in a way that they felt reduced its focus on old growth forests; the objective of the Ancient Forest Alliance was to fill a different niche than the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee by focusing on old growth forests and by not obtaining status as a charitable organization, which allows it to either endorse or condemn politicians based on their forest policies. By March 9, 2010, less than two months after its creation, the Ancient Forest Alliance had grown to over 6,000 Facebook members; the Ancient Forest Alliance has a board of directors consisting of Victoria conservationists and former Wilderness Committee activists Ken Wu, TJ Watt, Tara Sawatsky, Vancouver activist Michelle Connolly.
Most of the work has been volunteered by the board of directors and supporters, but in March, 2010, the Ancient Forest Alliance launched a fundraising drive so they could hire core staff and pay for campaign costs. Although the Ancient Forest Alliance is registered as a non-profit society in British Columbia, they have declared that they will not register as a charitable organization; the lack of charitable status makes fundraising more difficult, because they can not issue tax receipts for donations. However, it allows them to reject or endorse specific political candidates, based on their stance on old growth forests, while charitable organizations cannot take partisan political positions; the Ancient Forest Alliance has said that they will organize in swing ridings to have maximum effectiveness in influencing government policies. The Ancient Forest Alliance has stated that they will "help empower and guide new citizens' groups that are going to fight for ancient forests", which they feel will help them run an effective campaign on a much smaller budget than larger environmental organizations.
Since 2007, Ancient Forest Committees have been founded in various universities and regions of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria. These Ancient Forest Committees are autonomous, volunteer-run organizations that are independent from the Ancient Forest Alliance, but endorse its goals and strategies, collaborate on certain events such as rallies, hiking trips, activist training gatherings. Documenting ancient forests and giant treesThe Ancient Forest Alliance has stated that they will "explore and document endangered ancient forests, record-sized heritage trees, areas destroyed by old-growth logging." Photographer TJ Watt has been exploring and documenting old growth forests and giant trees for the Ancient Forest Alliance. Protecting the Red Creek Douglas Fir treesThe 1000-year old Red Creek fir is 73.8 m tall and 4.2m wide, is located near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island and is one of the largest Douglas-fir in the world.
In February 2010 the Ancient Forest Alliance announced that they had discovered new logging tape within a few hundred meters of the Red Creek Fir, that they feared it might soon be surrounded by a clearcut, making it susceptible to blowdown and reducing its tourism value. The Ministry of Forests has stated that the area surrounding the Red Creek Fir is protected from logging, that there are no plans to log the surrounding area in the immediate future. TimberWest, which owns the surrounding area, has confirmed this, stating that the logging tape does not mean that it will be logged, that they are not planning on logging the area within the next year or two; the Red Creek Fir is an important tourist attraction for the nearby town of Port Renfrew, according to the local Chamber of Commerce. TimberWest has said that they recognize the value of the tree, are looking at improving access to it for tourists; the Ancient Forest Alliance installed a new sign at the Red Creek Fir, were asking the British Columbia government to establish a Provincial Heritage Trees designation that will identify and protect the 100 largest and oldest specimens of each of the province's tree species.
The Alliance helped to publicize the issue of clearcutting of o
Friedrich "Fritz" Ebert Jr. was a German politician and East German communist official, the son of Germany's first President Friedrich Ebert. He was a Social Democrat like his father before him, but is best known for his role in the origins of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in which he served in various positions. Born in Bremen, Fritz Ebert underwent an apprenticeship as a printer from 1909 to 1913. In 1910 he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth and in 1913 the SPD. From 1915 to 1918 he fought in the First World War. During the Weimar Republic, he worked for various social democratic newspapers. In 1933, he was arrested for illegal political activity and detained for eight months in various concentration camps, e.g. Oranienburg and Börgermoor. In 1939, he was conscripted into the army. In 1940, he worked at the Reichsverlagsamt; until 1945 he was under constant police surveillance. After the demise of the Third Reich, he was elected chairman of the SPD in the Prussian province of Brandenburg.
Being the son of a former President made Ebert one of the foremost political leaders in East Germany. His role in this period can be compared with that of Jan Masaryk in post-war Czechoslovakia. Ebert was courted by the leaders of the Communist Party, who were aiming for unification of the much larger SPD with the smaller KPD, they wanted to use his father's supposed role in the breaking-up of the unity of the German working class in 1918 to get the young Ebert's support for the unification. In 1946 the unification of the two parties' branches in the Soviet Occupation Zone was carried out under Soviet pressure. After the creation of the new party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Ebert was elected to the Central Committee and from 1949 was a member of the Politburo, he served as President of the Landtag of Brandenburg 1946–1949. After the end of Allied cooperation and the breakup of the administration of Berlin, Ebert became mayor of East Berlin, he was a member of the Deutscher Volksrat, a preliminary parliament that drew up the first constitution of the GDR, after 1949 he became a member of the People's Chamber, the parliament of the GDR.
Between 1949 and 1971 he served as the chamber's deputy president. In 1971 he was elected chairman of the SED faction in the People's Chamber. From 1960 he was a member of the Council of State and from 1971 its deputy chairman; as such, he was acting head of state in 1973 after Walter Ulbricht's death until the election of Willi Stoph. Ebert lived in Majakowskiring street, East Berlin. Ebert was decorated with the Order of Karl Marx, the Patriotic Order of Merit, Star of People's Friendship and the Banner of Labor. After his resignation as mayor, the magistrate of East Berlin awarded him honorary citizenship, however declared null and void in 1992. Newspaper clippings about Friedrich Ebert Jr. in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW