Genocide

Genocide (pronounced jen-uh-sahyd)

(1) A special class of mass-murder, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group, usually by a state; the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

(2) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on other grounds.

(3) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic suppression of a cultural identity, language etc on the basis of cultural, racial or ethnic origin (often expressed as culturicide or cultural genocide).

1944: The construct is géno + cide.  Géno is from the Ancient Greek γένος (genos) (race; kind) from the primitive Indo-European gene- (give birth, beget (with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups)); it was cognate with the Latin gēns (tribe, clan).  The suffix cide (cīda) is from the Latin caedere (to kill; a killing).  The creation of the word genocide is attributed to Polish-born US lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) who used it in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1943-1944) in reference to the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Europe.  In the English-speaking world, there were the pedants who didn’t approve of the mixing of Latin and Greek, noting the proper formation would be genticide, the construct being the Latin gēns (a race, nation, people; a clan, family (oblique stem: gent-)) +‎ -cide and is a hypothetical Latin etymon of the form genticīdium (from gēns +‎ -cīdium (the suffix denoting “killer”; “cutter”) +‎ -ium (from the Latin -um (neuter singular morphological suffix)).  Genocidal is the adjective.

There was earlier, in a similar sense, the French populicide (variously cited as dating from 1792 or 1799) from French populicide, a construct made necessary by the excesses in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution.  This was later adopted in German as Völkermeuchelnden (genocidal) and was known in English by 1893 as the anglicized folk-murdering.  The less rigorous ethnocide is attested from 1970 in French and 1974 in English.

Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959).

The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had immersed himself in study after, as a student, being shocked to discover there existed nothing in international law to prosecute the Ottoman leaders who were complicit in what is now (though not by all) often called the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917) in which over a million are thought to have been killed.  Essentially, Lemkin identified the doctrine of sovereign immunity (the idea that what happens within nation boundaries must be regarded as purely internal matters) as the reason state-sanctioned mass-murder had such a long history and it could be stopped only if this doctrine was subject to some limitations.

In November 1944, Lemkin’s book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe was published.  It was a review of the legal implications of the consequences of the Nazi Germany New Order administrations in the occupied nations and contained the first definitional framework of genocide.  His point was that genocide did not of necessity mean “the immediate destruction of a nation” which was a concept of course familiar from thousands of years of warfare but instead signified “a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”  That formulation was something specific to the circumstances of the holocaust, a process which, for almost a decade, progressed from the Nazi state introducing laws which sought to marginalize and exclude the Jews from Germany’s cultural and economic life to the building of an industrial system intended to murder every Jew in Europe, a process which was organic, a reaction to the circumstances at the time.  The Nazis, upon their assumption of power in 1933 had not even the vaguest plan of extermination, not because Hitler would have thought mass-murder on any scale unacceptable but because it was unimaginable that such a thing was possible.  What was planned was eradication, the forced migration of the Jews from what Germany was and what it was to become, what would now be described (in the literal sense rather than as the euphemism with which the phrase is now associated) as ethnic cleansing.  It was the circumstances of inter-war politics and later war-time realities which meant (1) that mass-emigration firstly within and later beyond Europe was not possible and (2) that under the Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) of war, the mass-murder of millions became possible.  As the word tends now to be used, between 1933 and 1942, a displacement of population became genocide.

Perhaps surprisingly given the perceptions of many, the word genocide did not figure large in the incitements served at the Nuremburg Trial (1946-1946), being mentioned not as one of the four counts but included in Count Three (War Crimes:  "...deliberate and systematic genocide, viz, the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others."

Judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

Although the holocaust was the most monstrous matter to be tried at Nuremberg, any reluctance to include genocide as a separate count was understandable. Nothing quite like the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which convened at Nuremberg had ever been assembled and it was acknowledged at the time some of the matters with which the defendants were charged were based in retrospective law; they were being held to account for conduct which, at the time, was not unlawful.  Sensitive to this and the need to frame the incitements as close as possible to acknowledged legal norms, the prosecutors, mostly working lawyers for whom the primary concern was winning the case, tried as much as possible to avoid novelty in the incitement.  As it was, the document grew from a three-odd page draft in June to a final copy of sixty-five pages when served on the defendants.  The word genocide appeared just the once.

Genocide was in 1946 recognized as a crime under international law by the United Nations General Assembly and was codified as a crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention.  It expanded Lemkin’s definition, holding that genocide was “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(1) Killing members of the group.

(2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

(3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

(5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide is defined in the same terms in the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions.  Over one-hundred and fifty states have ratified the convention but the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has anyway ruled the convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law so whether or not ratified, in legal theory, all states are bound by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law.  Many states have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law.  Technically, intent is the most contentious element in any genocide prosecution.  To succeed, intent must be a proven on the part of perpetrators physically to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; cultural suppression or destruction is not genocide and nor is expulsion from territory. 

After Nuremberg, genocide was long applied only to the destruction of an ethnic group (as conventionally defined) although there has more recently been a debate about whether it applies only if killing of all members of the group is involved or if other means, such as dispersing the group to the point where shared cultural practices or identity are no longer possible also constitutes (an unqualified) genocide; the concepts of cultural genocide, linguistic genocide etc.  The crime has never needed to be absolute.  It has always been understood to include “systematic mass killing”, even if there’s not an intention absolutely to eradicate a group, thereby covering geographically localized events, the actions which in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came to be known as “ethnic cleansing”.  Where there is some purpose other than the actual destruction of a group, such as terrorizing the group or killing the population of a particular place irrespective of group membership, the more precise term is democide, the construct being the Ancient Greek δῆμος (demos) (people) +‎ -cide.  

As many passages in sacred texts (including the Koran and the Bible) indicate, genocide, as a political imperative and military strategy, has a long and cross-cultural history in human civilization.  Although most attention is devoted to the most modern events with the highest death-toll (such as the holocaust, the still disputed matter of the Armenians in 1915 and the events in Rwanda in 1994), in a global sense, the most recent genocide which went closest to succeeding was the genocide of the Moriori, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (which lie to the east of New Zealand).  Invaded by the Maori in 1835, the Moriori were subject to mass murder, enslavement and a policy of deliberate cultural repression; the population which had once numbered close to two thousand by the 1870s shrinking to under a hundred.  In a sense that act of genocide did succeed, the last pure-blooded Moriori dying early in the twentieth century.

Regent

Regent (pronounced ree-juhnt)

(1) A person who exercises the ruling power in a kingdom during the minority, absence, or disability of the sovereign.

(2) A ruler or governor (obsolete).

(3) In certain schools and colleges in Scotland, the US and Canada, a member of the governing board of a state university or a state educational system.

(4) A university officer who exercises general supervision over the conduct and welfare of the students (now rare); a senior teacher or administrator in certain universities (rare, mostly obsolete).

(5) In certain Catholic universities, a member of the religious order who is associated in the administration of a school or college with a layperson who is its dean or director.

1375-1400: From the Anglo-Norman regent (a ruler), from the adjective regent (ruling, governing (later "exercising vicarious authority")), from the Middle French, from the Old French, from the Medieval  Latin regentem from regēns (ruling; ruler, governor, prince), present participle of regō (I govern, I steer), noun use of present participle of regere (to rule, direct).  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European reg- (move in a straight line) derivatives of this carrying the sense “to direct in a straight line" thus eventually the meaning "to lead, rule".  The most familiar meaning "one who rules during the minority or absence of a sovereign" emerged in the early fifteenth century as an alternative to king, not implying legitimacy or permanence of rule; the Latin for this was interrex (plural interreges).  The sense "university faculty member" is attested from late fourteenth century and preserves the original meaning.  When used in any of its adjectival forms, the sense is usually postpositive.

The last King of Italy

Umberto II while Prince of Piedmont, a 1928 portrait by Anglo-Hungarian painter Philip Asexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László).  Note one un-gloved hand, ruffled collar and bubble pantaloons.

Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia (1904–1983) was the last king of Italy, his reign as Umberto II lasting but thirty-four days during May-June 1946; Italians nicknamed him the Re di Maggio (May king) although some better-informed Romans preferred regina di maggio (May queen).  At the instigation of the US and British political representatives of the allied military authorities, in April 1944 he was appointed regent because it was clear popular support for Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) had collapsed.  Despite Victor Emmanuel’s reputation suffering by association, his relationship with the fascists had often been uneasy and, seeking means to blackmail the royal house, Benito Mussolini's (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) spies compiled a dossier (reputably several inches thick), detailing the ways of his son’s private life.  Then styled Prince of Piedmont, the secret police discovered Umberto was a sincere and committed Roman Catholic but one unable to resist his "satanic homosexual urges” and his biographer agreed, noting the prince was "forever rushing between chapel and brothel, confessional and steam bath" often spending hours “praying for divine forgiveness.”  Presumably, he contented himself he'd often found forgiveness though that didn't stop him afterwards repeating his sins.

After a referendum abolished the monarchy, Umberto II lived his remaining 37 years in exile, never again setting foot on Italian soil; while his turbulent marriage to Princess Marie-José of Belgium (1906-2001) produced four children, historians consider it likely none were his.  Despite extensive documentation confirming the prince was possessed by “satanic homosexual urges”, it’s most unlikely the Duce ever contemplated contacting the Vatican to seek the intervention of an exorcist.  Although baptized by his devout Catholic mother, Mussolini when young became an atheist and was stridently anti-clerical, something more than one biographer has attributed (at least in part) to the canings ill-discipline earned him from the monks who were his school teachers.  The Duce certainly understood the Church could be useful and knew his regime likely would not long have survived had the Vatican become his enemy but, although famously he signed the Lateran Treaty (1929) making Catholicism the state religion, he never took seriously the “devotional or mystical stuff” and, after he met a messy end, he was denied a religious funeral.

Lindsay Lohan at the Mr Pink Ginseng Drink Launch Party, Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, 11 October 2012.

Flounce & Ruffle

Flounce (pronounced flouns)

(1) To go with impatient or impetuous, exaggerated movements.

(2) To throw the body about spasmodically; flounder.

(3) An act or instance of flouncing; a flouncing movement.

(4) A strip of material gathered or pleated and attached at one edge, with the other edge left loose or hanging: used for trimming, as on the edge of a skirt or sleeve or on a curtain, slipcover etc.

1535–1545: Of obscure and contested origin.  Some sources suggest something akin to words from old dialectal Scandinavian forms such as the Norwegian flunsa (to hurry) or the Swedish flunsa (to plunge; to splash) but the first record of these is two centuries after the English is first documented.  Thus more preferred is a derivation of the obsolete Old French frounce (wrinkle), from the Germanic froncir (to wrinkle) and the eventual spelling in English was probably influenced by bounce.  Notions of "anger, impatience" began to adhere to the word during the eighteenth century although, as a noun of motion, use dates from the 1580s.  The use to describe “an ornamental gathered ruffle sewn to a garment by its top edge” (a kind of ruffle) was first noted in 1713, from the fourteenth century Middle English frounce (pleat, wrinkle, fold) from the Old French fronce & frounce (line, wrinkle; pucker, crease, fold) from the Frankish hrunkjan (to wrinkle), ultimately derived from the Proto-Germanic hrunk.  Flounce, flounciness & flouncing are nouns & verbs, flounced is a verb, flouncier, flounciest & flouncey are adjectives and flouncily is an adverb; the noun plural is flounces.  In the industry, "flouncy" is sometimes used as noun, applied to garments flouncier than most.

Ruffle (pronounced ruhf-uhl)

(1) To destroy the smoothness or evenness of; to produce waves or undulations.

(2) In avian behaviour, for a bird to erect the feathers, usually to convey threat, defiance etc.

(3) To disturb, vex, or irritate; disturbance or vexation; annoyance; irritation; a disturbed state of mind; perturbation.

(4) Rapidly to turn the pages of a book.

(5) In the handling of playing cards, rapidly to pass cards through the fingers while shuffling.

(6) In tailoring, to draw up cloth, lace etc, into a ruffle by gathering along one edge.

(7) In military music, in the field of percussion, the low, continuous vibrating beating of a drum, quieter than a roll (also called a ruff).

(8) To behave riotously; an arrogantly display; a swagger (obsolete).

(9) In zoology, the connected series of large egg capsules, or oothecae, of several species of American marine gastropods of the genus Fulgur.

(10) In LGBTQQIAAOP slang, the passive partner in a lesbian relationship, known also as a “fluff”.

1250-1300: From Middle English ruffelen, possibly from the Old Norse hruffa & hrufla (to graze, scratch) or the Middle Low German ruffelen (to wrinkle, curl) but beyond that the origin is unknown.  It was related to the Middle Dutch ruyffelen and the German & Low German ruffeln.  The meaning "disarrange" (hair or feathers) dates from the late fifteenth century; the sense of "annoy, distract" is from the 1650s.  As one could become ruffled, so too one be unruffled, that adjectival form dating from the 1650s.  The literal meaning, in reference to feathers, leaves and such was first recorded in 1816.  Synonyms (though sometimes overlapping or inaccurately applied) as applied to fabrics include strip (of fabric), frill, pleat & furbelow.  As applied to the state of mind there’s disarrange, disorder, wrinkle, rumple, disturbance, agitation, commotion, flurry & perturbation.  One popular use of "unruffled" is to describe the characteristics of an engine which does its stuff smoothly, unobtrusively and seemingly effortlessly (the latter a matter of perception rather than mechanical understanding).  Ruffle is a noun & verb, ruffler & rufflement are nouns, ruffled & ruffling are verbs, ruffly & ruffleable are adjectives and rufflingly is an adverb; the noun plural is ruffles.

Ruffled silk thong in rose pink by Daisysilk.

The use in dressmaking to describe “an ornamental frill" is attested from 1707, derived from the verb ruffle.  Related stylistically to the ruffle is the ruff in the sense of the large, stiffly starched collar especially common in the seventeenth century, a style which dated from the 1520s; used originally in reference to sleeves, it came to be applied to collars after the 1550s, almost certainly a a shortened form of ruffle which described something physically much bigger.  As applied to playing cards, it’s actually a separate word, dating from the 1580s, from a former game of that name.  In this context, word is from the French roffle, from the early fifteenth century romfle, from the Italian ronfa, possibly a corruption of trionfo (triumph).  The game was popular between 1590-1630.  The now obsolete sense of an arrogant display or swagger is from the fifteenth century and the origin is obscure but may related to some perception of those who wore ruffs or ruffles.  The meaning as used in the percussion section of military bands is from 1715–1725 and may have been imitative of the drum sound.

Consciously or not, designers can find themselves adding to whatever post-modernism now is.  Whether overlap or irony, when it hard to work out where the ruffle ends and the flounce begins; pragmatists sometimes admit defeat and describe it all as "frills".   

Describing various flavors of embellishment, flounce and ruffle have long been used interchangeably but in the narrow technical sense they’ve never been synonymous.  A ruffle is a piece of material gathered, usually at the top, the fullness extending the entire length of the fabric, while a flounce tends to flare, almost always smooth at the top and wider and fuller towards the bottom.  In dressmaking, as in any engineering discipline, terminological exactitude should be encouraged because one would be disappointed to receive ruffles if one really wanted a bit of flounce.  For those for who the distinction seems abstract, all such creations can be regarded as just “frilly” although, even within the industry, there are those who call flounces “circular ruffles”.

Lindsay Lohan in ruffles.

As a general principle, a ruffle is created by the manipulation of a piece of fabric cut in the shape of a rectangle.  Actual geometric precision is not required because depending on the garment and the effect desired, the shape may vary but it will at least tend towards the rectangular.  The technique is to gather the fabric at the top into a smaller area; when this is sewn into a seam line, typically at the waist or neck-line, the pleats created by the gather will fall naturally, the swishing movement inherent in the fullness of the fabric being the ruffle.  The outcome is determined by the fabric’s relationship of width and length and the weight and type of material used.

The first ruffles were probably nothing to do with fashion but merely a layered appendage to protective clothing, usually as a form of water-proofing.  In the decorative sense, although antecedents can be identified in ancient Egyptian art, in their modern form they appeared first in the mid-fifteenth century as attachments to the collars of chemises which, as happens in fashion, grew in shape and complexity into the large and elaborated ruffled constructions associated with Tudor England.  Since, although the flow and flourish has waxed and waned, the ruffle has never really gone away, despite the wishes of those who prefer more austere lines.  The ruffle can also be a device, the design adaptable to either (1) add visual bulk to a small bustline or (2) disguise a large bustline. 

Lindsay Lohan, flouncing about in flounces.

The construction of a flounce differs in that the pattern tends always towards the circular, the cut technically the shape of a donut although those both ambitious and skillful can render flounces used both irregular and more complex curves although one often under-appreciated factor in success is the weight and flexibility of the material chosen: the outcome is determined by depth of the curve, the width of the fabric and the weight and type of material used.  For a flounce successfully to work, it needs to “flounce” and the movement can be influenced as much by weight as cut.  It’s the inner edge of the donut which, without any gather, is sewn into the seam while the outside edge of becomes the fullness at the hem, the volume created by virtue of the longer line.  Because the inner edge is so much shorter, there’s not the same need to gather so the results tends to be soft billows of fabric rather than pleats.  The same technique can be used to create a layered effect where the material flares out not at all but instead follow the line of the garment; this is achieved by a cut where the inner edge is much closer in length to the outer so the shape is closer to a crescent.

The flounced and ruffled neckline: Salma Hayek demonstrates the difference.  Salma Hayek’s fine choice of clutch purses always catches the eye.

Ruffles and flounces are most associated with a wrap which extends around the garment but variations of the shape of the cuts and the techniques of attachment are used whenever something voluminous needs to be attached. Flounced and ruffled necklines and sleeves use the same rectangle versus donut model as the larger interpretations, both often used in scalloped cuts.  There being a geometric limit to the degree of flouncing that can be achieved for the cut alone, it’s possible further to exaggerate the effect with the insertion of a godet (from the Middle French godet, from the Dutch kodde (a piece of cylindrical wood)), a wedge-shaped section of fabric which deepens the floating wave at the hem without adding to the bulk gathered at the point of attachment.

Sometimes ruffled: The last King of Italy

Umberto II while Prince of Piedmont, a 1928 portrait by Anglo-Hungarian painter Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László). Note the ruffled collar and bubble pantaloons.

Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia (1904–1983) was the last king of Italy, his reign as Umberto II lasting but thirty-four days during May-June 1946; Italians nicknamed him the Re di Maggio (May king) although some better-informed Romans preferred regina di maggio (May queen).  At the instigation of the US and British political representatives of the allied military authorities, in April 1944 he was appointed regent because it was clear popular support for Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) had collapsed.  Despite Victor Emmanuel’s reputation suffering by association, his relationship with the fascists had often been uneasy and, seeking means to blackmail the royal house, Mussolini’s spies compiled a dossier (reputably several inches thick), detailing the ways of his son’s private life.  Then styled Prince of Piedmont, the secret police discovered Umberto was a sincere and committed Roman Catholic but one unable to resist his "satanic homosexual urges” and his biographer agreed, noting the prince was "forever rushing between chapel and brothel, confessional and steam bath" often spending hours “praying for divine forgiveness.”  After a referendum abolished the monarchy, Umberto II lived his remaining 37 years in exile, never again setting foot on Italian soil.  His turbulent marriage to Princess Marie-José of Belgium (1906-2001) produced four children but historians consider it quite possible none of them were his.

Zollverein

Zollverein (pronounced tsawl-fer-ahyn (German) or tsawl-fuh-rahyn (English))

(1) A nineteenth century union of German states for the maintenance of a uniform tariff on imports from other countries, and of free trading among themselves (organized in the early 1830s under Prussian auspices)

(2) Casual term for any similar union or arrangement between states; a customs union.

1833: A Modern German compound word, the construct being zoll (custom, duty, tariff) + verein (union).  Zoll was from the Old High German zol, from the Proto-Germanic tullō (what is counted or told).  An alternatively etymology has been suggested: the Medieval Latin toloneum, from the Classical Latin telōnēum (from the Ancient Greek τελωνεῖον (telōneîon) (custom house) from τέλος (télos) (due, tax, toll) but most scholars prefer the Germanic.  Verein (a union, association or society) is another German compound, the construct being ver- + ein + -en, the colloquial translation being something like “joining one into many”.  Zollverein is a noun, the noun plural is plural Zollvereine (although Zollvereins might be expected in the English-speaking world, possible without the initial capital obligatory in German).

Mission Creep

Changes in the Zollverein (Prussia and the Second Reich), 1834-1888

In the second referendum run on the matter, in 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU (Brexit) and for a while the conventional wisdom was that one's position should be something like : "It may or may not be a good idea; it’s too soon to tell".  That moment has passed and it seems now clear it was a very bad idea.  What the UK joined in 1973 was the European Economic Community (EEC), a Zollverein created by the Treaty of Rome (1957) with the intention of achieving economic integration among its member states and, in the English-speaking world, usually referred to as the common market.  Following the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, the EEC was renamed the European Community (EC) to reflect the extension of the community’s remit beyond trade and economic policy, a structure which existed until 2009 Treaty of Lisbon which created the European Union (EU) a more overtly political entity.  The road to Brexit began in Maastricht, remembered in the lore of the Tory Party's many right-wing fanatics in the phrase of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990): "A treaty too far".

One who can’t be blamed for the Brexit vote resulting in the UK’s departure from the EU was Lindsay Lohan who, in England at the time, operated as one of planet Earth’s more improbable Cassandras, tweeting during the evening in real-time as the vote count was announced.  Unfortunately, although she made a compelling (if at times idiosyncratic) case for remain, of the 72.21% of registered voters who on 23 June 2016 bothered to cast a ballot, 51.89% disagreed and the leave case prevailed.  As an EU pundit, Ms Lohan displayed a good grasp of the issues including the implications for the exchange rate of Sterling and the positive benefits the UK had gained from the adoption of EU workplace safety directives although despite have apparently for a time “lived in Manchester”, needed to ask “where’s Sunderland”, one of the places expected to be among the first to report a result.  Fortunately, for anyone who doesn’t know where Sunderland is, Twitter (now known as X) is the platform to post the question which was soon answered.  Manchester too proved a disappointment, voting to leave, something Ms Lohan seemed to regard a personal affront given the her connection.

Since Brexit, many have expressed the view that had the EU remained a Zollverein and not evolved into a quasi-federal state, there would never have been sufficient public pressure to compel the political class to stage a referendum but Euro-scepticism had quite a pre-Maastricht history in the UK and in June 1975 the Labour government conducted the nation’s first national referendum, asking whether the UK should remain in the EC.  The, there was cross-party support to remain and almost two-thirds of the electorate supported that but then, the movement of people across borders wasn’t the issue it has become and despite all of other matters raised in the 2016 campaign, it was essentially a referendum about immigration, lawful and not.  Those concerns show no sign of going away and for a variety of reasons, the movement of people towards the UK, the EU and the US is likely only to increase but the conditions which were the reasons the UK sought membership in 1963 are not wholly dissimilar to what prevails in 2023.  It seems now unthinkable that London could re-apply for membership but, as Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881; UK prime-minister Feb-Dec 1868 & 1874-1880) famously observed “finality is not the language of politics” and Lindsay Lohan may yet be vindicated.

Nexus

Nexus (pronounced nek-suhs)

(1) A means of connection, tie or link; a form or state of connection.

(2) A connected series or group (objects or concepts); a network or web.

(3) The core or center or a matter, discussion or situation.

(4) In cellular biology, a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.

(5) In digital anthropology, the world’s first web browser.

(6) In law in many North American jurisdictions, the relationship between a vendor and a jurisdiction taxation purposes.

(7) In formal grammar, a technical term in the work of Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) describing a group of words expressing two concepts in one unit (such as a clause or sentence).

(8) In the civil law of Ancient Rome, a person who had contracted a nexum (obligation) such that, if they failed to re-pay that obliged, a creditor could compel them to work as a servant until the debt was paid; an indentured servant.

1655-1665: From the Latin nexus (the act of binding together; bond), the perfect passive participle of nectō (bind) and past participle of nectere (to bind).  Nectō was from the primitive Indo-European gned & gnod (to bind) and was cognate with nōdus (knot), the Ancient Greek γνάθος (gnáthos) (a jaw), the Avestan naska (bundle), the Old Irish nascim (to bind), the Old Norse knútr (from which German gained knude, Norwegian knute, and Icelandic hnútur).  Related were the Old English cnotta (which survives in Modern English as knot), the Old English cnyttan (which in Modern English is knit), the Old High German knotto (knoten in modern German) and the Middle Dutch cnudde (the Modern Dutch knot).  The suffix created the Latin verb of action.  Nexus is a noun; the noun plural is nexuses, nexusses or (the very rare) nexus although the Latin plural form (written nexūs or nexûs) is used in process philosophy, a highly technical branch of the discipline which administers the school of thought that change (ie alterations in the state of relationship(s) between things) constitute the only experience of life (the alternative schools focused on the process of change being understood as inadvertent or illusory).

Australia's defeated 1967 nexus referendum

Section 24 of the Australian Constitution provides for a numerical nexus between the House of Representatives (lower house) and the Senate (upper house):

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, and the number of such members shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the number of the senators.

The senate chamber in the new parliament house, opened in 1988.  The scope of works given to the architects required that both chambers should be able (without major structural change) to be re-configured to accommodate up to twice the number of members.  The building is said to have an anticipated life of some two-hundred years so it would appear in the 1970s, nobody expected there was for centuries any possibility of breaking the nexus between the houses.  Despite the ominous prospect, Australians seem rarely to think the quantity of politicians is lacking although they are often sceptical about the quality.  

Lindsay Lohan in Nexxus Style Swap hair campaign, October 2024.

After an abortive attempt in 1966, a referendum was held the following year which sought to remove the nexus, thereby freezing the number of senators at ten per state (an increase from the original six triggered by the enlargement of the lower house in 1949).  The cabinet’s enthusiasm for curbing any proliferation of senators was prompted by concern an increase in the size of the upper house would make it easier for minor parties to win seats.  The referendum was defeated and the problem persists.  As the number of senators to be elected increases, the votes each needed to gain a seat (a quota) reduces and by the 1980s, a quota in a normal half-senate election was well under 20%; in a double-dissolution, less than 8%.  That, when combined with preferential voting, means votes surplus to a quota flow through the system and it’s become successively easier to succeed, a few senators having been elected with but a handful of first-preference votes.  Section 24 is not monocausal, there being many reasons for the decline in the share of the vote enjoyed by the major parties but the recent success of micro-parties would not have been possible without the operation of the clause.  For a generation, political excrement like the Democratic Labor Party (the DLP, a right-wing, predominately Roman Catholic breakaway from the Australian Labor Party (ALP)) was helped by the lower quotas demanded in a senate of sixty rather than thirty-six.  The modern senate of seventy-six is democratically more promiscuous still.

Lindsay Lohan in a lilac dress, desktop wallpaper available from Desktop Nexus.

In Australia, as in all modern Westminster systems, the major parties alternate in their roles as "His Majesty's Government" and "His Majesty's loyal opposition" but they are as one in their attempt to keep others out of the cozy little system they've designed for themselves and, ahead of the 2016 election, changes were implemented to stop preference arrangements between minor parties and independents producing results said to be "a distortion of the electoral process" (ie independents and those from minor parties being elected to seats the majors regarded as "belonging to them").  Further to advantage the majors, a form of optional preferential voting was introduced, said to have been done to assist voters but the most obvious beneficiaries were the major parties because it became harder for independents or minor party candidates to be elected to the Senate.

Phlogiston

Phlogiston (pronounced floh-jis-ton or floh-jis-tuhn)

In chemistry, a hypothetical colorless, odorless, weightless substance once believed to be the combustible part of all flammable substances and given off as flame during burning; sometimes styled poetically as the “fiery principle”.

1610-1620: From the New Latin phlogiston, from the Ancient Greek φλογιστόν (phlogistón), neuter of φλογιστός (phlogistós), (burnt up, inflammable), from φλογίζω (phlogízō), (to set fire to), from φλόξ (phlóx) (flame).  The most familiar Greek forms were phlogizein (to set alight) and phlegein (to burn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European bhel (to shine, flash, burn (also “shining white)).  Bhel proved most productive, used especially when forming words for bright colors and was part of beluga; Beltane; black; blancmange; blanch; blank; blanket; blaze (as in "bright flame, fire)" bleach; bleak; blemish; blench; blende; blend; blind; blindfold; blitzkrieg; blond; blue; blush; conflagration; deflagration; effulgence; effulgent; flagrant; flambe; flambeau; flamboyant; flame; flamingo; flammable; Flavian; Flavius; fulgent; fulminate; inflame; inflammable; phlegm; phlegmatic; phlogiston; phlox; purblind; refulgent & riboflavin.  As well as the Ancient Greek phlegein (to burn), the word was apparently related to the Sanskrit bhrajate (shines), the Latin flamma (flame), fulmen (lightning), fulgere (to shine, flash) & flagrare (to burn, blaze, glow), the Old Church Slavonic belu (white) and the Lithuanian balnas (pale).  The related forms were phlogistic, phlogisticating, phlogistication & phlogisticated and the scientific necessity of the age also demanded the creation of the verb dephlogisticate (deprive of phlogiston), thus also dephlogisticated, dephlogisticating & dephlogistication.

Alchemy & Chemistry

As the surgeons emerged from the barber’s shop the chemists were once alchemists.  Chemistry began as alchemy, once a respectable branch of learning concerned, inter alia, with the study and purification of materials, the dubious reputation it now suffers because of the fixation in popular culture on its work in developing the chemical process chrysopoeia, the transmutation of “base metals” such as lead into "noble metals", especially gold.  That particular notion of molecular re-arrangement proved a cul-de-sac but some of the laboratory techniques and experimental models developed in medieval alchemy remain in use today.

One pioneer of modern chemistry was German chemist & physician Georg Stahl (1660–1734) who devoted much attention to the fundamental nature of combustion: What happens when stuff burns?  Developing an idea first proposed in 1667 by German physician & alchemist Joachim Becher (1635–1682), in 1702, Stahl proposed that all inflammable objects contained a material substance he called “phlogiston”, from the Greek word meaning “to set on fire”.  When something burned, it liberated its content of phlogiston into the air and Stahl believed it to be chemically inert.  Stahl’s phlogiston theory would dominate scientific thinking for a century.

Phlogiston theory for a while survived even the odd inconvenient truth.  When experiments revealed that burning (oxidizing) a piece of metal resulted in it weighing more rather than less (contrary to phlogiston theory which suggested it would be lighter by the weight of the evacuated phlogiston), the inconsistency was resolved by postulating that phlogiston was either (1) an immaterial principle rather than a material substance (2), phlogiston had a negative weight or (3), phlogiston was lighter than air.  So much did the theory become scientific orthodoxy that when chemists isolated hydrogen, it was celebrated as pure phlogiston.

The execution of Lavoisier, woodcut by unknown artist.  Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a nobleman and a tax collector, neither quality likely much to appeal to the mob which prevailed after the French Revolution.  In 1794 he and twenty-seven other tax-farmers were executed by guillotine in Paris at the Place de la Révolution (now the Place de la Concorde).  A fellow scientist at the time lamented: "It took them only an instant to cut off that head, and one hundred years might not be sufficient to produce another like it.”

It would be decades before those with doubts, and there were a few, systemized their objections into an alternative theory.  In 1775, French chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier delivered a paper he called Memoir on the nature of the principle which combines with metals during their calcination [oxidation] and which increases their weight to a meeting of the French Royal Academy of Sciences.  Subsequently it was published in 1778.  Lavoisier named the combustible part of air principe oxigine (acidifying principle) from the Ancient Greek, the construct being ὀξύς (oxús) (sharp) + γένος (génos) (birth), referring to his erroneous belief that oxygen was a vital component of all acids, this his choice of “acid producing”.  The French adopted the variant principe oxygène and in English it became oxygen.  The fraction of air that does not support combustion he called azote, (no life) from the Ancient Greek, the construct being ἀ- (a-) (without) + ζωή (zōḗ) (life), the idea being the substance was incapable of sustaining life.  Azote is now called “nitrogen”, from the French nitrogène, the construct being the nitro- (from the Ancient Greek νίτρον (nítron) (sodium carbonate) +‎ the French gène (producing).  From this paper, which eventually laid to rest phlogiston theory, emerged the foundations for the understanding of chemical reactions as combinations of elements which form new materials; the birth of modern chemistry.  Lavoisier’s model was convincingly elegant but there were those in the scientific establishment with reputations vested in phlogiston theory and some would prove recalcitrant.  Even when the existence of oxygen and nitrogen had become widely accepted, some remained so inculcated they felt compelled to integrate the old with the new, oxygen and nitrogen a filter with which to view phlogiston; a construction of reality which in the post-Trumpian world would be called “alternative facts”. 

Most famous was the eminent English chemist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) who, even after personally identifying oxygen and well after Lavoisier's paper had persuaded nearly all others, insisted oxygen was but “dephlogisticated air” and in his 1796 paper Considerations on the doctrine of phlogiston and the decomposition of water, he labeled Lavoisier's devotees as “Antiphlogistians”, objecting to the idea of some “theory so new” and based on “so very narrow and precarious a foundation” suddenly overturning “the best established chemistry”.  Two centuries later, a similarly doomed rearguard action would be fought by the “steady-staters” against the big-bang theory explaining the origins of the universe.  Until his dying day, Priestley never accepted the invalidation of phlogiston theory but the increasingly complicated modifications he, and a dwindling few others, bolted-on to make it conform with the undeniable implications of Lavoisier’s model were unconvincing and by the turn of the nineteenth century, phlogiston’s days were over.