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Fire Escape Partners
3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (transitive verb)
[kon'-trah-VEEN] 
1. to act contrary to; to violate; 'to contravene a law'; 'to contravene a direct order': "As a senior member of the help desk team, Adam knew that helping an employee install a file sharing program would contravene company policy."
2. to oppose, especially in argument
noun form: contravener
Origin:
Approximately 1567; borrowed from Middle French, 'contravenir': to transgress, to decline; borrowed from Late Latin, 'contravenire': to oppose; from Latin, 'contra-': against + 'venire': to come. In action:
"This year, however, the arrival of the cyclists may bring more confusion than good vibes. A bitter feud between the event's organizers and its beneficiaries culminated recently in the creation of a competing AIDS ride, which is scheduled to take place two weeks before the original one...
Pallotta predictably maintains that it is the new ride that threatens to undercut AIDS fundraising. 'This is not an issue of the noble nonprofit against the for-profit company,' says Norm Bowling, Pallotta senior vice president of business and public affairs. 'They made the decision not to participate as beneficiaries, and that's fine. But to schedule their event two weeks ahead of CAR 9 is not only unfair, but also blatantly provocative. It contravenes a long-standing ethic in charity fundraising not to undercut another organization's event."
Cyril Manning. "Holier than thou: A bitter battle between organizers and beneficiaries tears the California AIDS Ride apart." Salon.com (February 1, 2002).
"In addition to efforts on security issues, we need to address a parallel humanitarian problem in North Korea that now appears to be worsening. Up to 300,000 North Korean refugees are stuck in China. Many of them live in hiding in the border areas of northeastern China, fearful of being arrested by Chinese authorities and being sent back to North Korea. Many of the women are exploited by Chinese gangsters and forced into prostitution or abusive marriages.
A large number of those who are caught face an even worse fate when they are returned to North Korea. Because leaving North Korea is considered treason, many returnees are imprisoned, interrogated under torture and sometimes executed. China�s actions contravene international conventions it has signed, and Beijing won�t let the refugees pass on to South Korea. From the flood of North Korean refugees last year, only a trickle, an estimated 1,200, made it to the South. Most of them were people who had managed to get beyond the border area and find a foreign embassy in Beijing."
Richard G. Lugar. "A Korean Catastrophe," The Washington Post (July 20, 2003).
'Rowling's close detail of a late capitalist, global consumer culture,' she writes, 'marks the wizarding community as an echo of and commentary on both the Muggle world of the novels and the contemporary world of post-Thatcher England.'
Cornelius Fudge, the head of the Ministry of Magic, would apparently feel at home in either John Major's or Tony Blair's cabinet.
Susan Hall is more damning. A lawyer, Ms. Hall analyzes the wizards' legal system. She draws comparisons to the European Commission, the British Defense of Realm Acts and the Terrorism Act of 2000 and concludes that many Ministry of Magic procedures contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.
Among the new analyses, Jung and Freud must have their day ('anal-phase aggression' and 'anal-phase delight' are both 'heavily featured in the Harry Potter series'), as must linguists and feminists (see 'Cinderfella: J. K. Rowling's Wily Web of Gender')."
Patricia Cohen. "The Phenomenology of Harry, or the Critique of Pure Potter," The New York Times (July 19, 2003).
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