By Benjamin Daniali
His Assyrian ancestors invented wheels and chariots, and now he designs luxury cars. Emil Badal, 26, recently migrated to United States, and his American Dream is to study Transportation Design.
Emil’s portfolio is online at www.emilbadal.com in which he showcases new 3D models for famous cars, from Hummer Rhino, to Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, Chevrolet Corvette, Ferrari, and sweet BMWs.
Sydney – Preparations are under way in Sydney - Australia for the upcoming celebration of Assyria day. This event will be held on 3rd July 2011 at 5:00pm at “Ur Ashur” located on 1677, the Horsley Drive, Horsley Park. The Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) designated the Assyria Day at its 27th World Congress held during 2nd - 4th December 2010 in Erbil, Iraq, and therefore requests all Assyrians throughout the world to observe this day as a symbol of our national revival day, “Return to Assyria.”
According to Mr. Hermiz Shahen (Deputy Secretary General and the Regional Secretary of the AUA in Australia & New Zealand), the organizing committee is preparing for this great event and has sent invitations to all of our organizations & parties to attend and participate in this national occasion. This event aims at sending a message regarding the rights of the Assyrians to safely return to their homeland, to affirm their rights to exist in harmony, peace & security with their neighbors by exercising the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all other international conventions and treaties which emphasize refugee’s right of return. It also supports the demands of the Assyrians in their pursuit of an autonomous federal province or state.
The Assyria Region is crucial for the survival of the Assyrians of Iraq, and will allow for a greater local Assyrian control within the context of an integrated and sovereign Iraqi state. Such a region will allow for increased peace, stability and balance throughout the whole region.
Mr. Shahen continued that AUA has submitted a number of appeals and has entered into negotiations with various governments and international organizations on behalf of the Assyrian Nation. The objective of such efforts has been to advance the Assyrian cause internationally on both humanitarian and political fronts. AUA strives to demonstrate that Diaspora Assyrians aspire to live in peace and harmony as worthy members of their host societies. As to the Assyrian people who remain in their homeland, AUA seeks the support of democratic governments and international bodies in defending their indigenous rights and their highly cherished national identity, culture, heritage, language and religion.
Rudaw -- The Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Receb Tayyib Erdogan won the majority of votes in Turkey’s elections on Sunday. Fifteen parties ran in the parliamentary elections where PM’s AKP party secured a third term in office. AKP’s parliamentary seats however, went down from 341 in the 2007 elections to 326 and this is short of the two-thirds of total seats that AKP needs to have a super majority.
Assyrians in Chicago remember when an ethnic gang roamed Albany Park
By John Greenfield
Time Out Chicago
George Knox knows how difficult life can be for recent immigrants. "A lot of new immigrant groups go through a period of cultural conflict when they’re susceptible to discrimination and bullying," says Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center, based in Peotone, 40 miles south of Chicago. This period of adjustment, Knox says, leads some immigrants to form gangs.
By Sharon Cohen
The Associated Press
It was a monumental project with modest beginnings: a small group of scholars and some index cards. The plan was to explore a long-dead language that would reveal an ancient world of chariots and concubines, royal decrees and diaries - and omens that came from the heavens and sheep livers.
The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.
Decades passed. The team grew. Scholars arrived from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London, joining others from the U.S. and Canada. One generation gave way to the next, one century faded into the next. Some signed on early in their careers; they were still toiling away at retirement. The work was slow, sometimes frustrating and decidedly low-tech: Typewriters. Mimeograph machines. And index cards. Eventually, nearly 2 million of them.
YEREVAN: The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) reports that the parliament of the Republic of Armenia called upon parliaments and legislative bodies throughout the world to recognise and condemn the genocide of the Armenians, Hellenes and Assyrians perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey from 1915 to 1923.
In a Parliamentary Declaration on the occasion of the 96th anniversary commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, the Republic of Armenia National Assembly Speaker, Hovik Abrahamyan stated that recognition of the genocides perpetrated against the Armenians, Hellenes and Assyrians would lead to the restoration of justice and the of prevention other genocides in the future.
Fixing the errors of the past sets the foundation for securing the future.
Chamaoun Danho
A writer from Mesopotamia
Following the Ottoman State resolution to remove the Armenians from their historical homeland in April 24, 1914, the Assyrians (Church Of The East, Syrians and Chaldeans) were victims of racial genocides as well as brutal and horrible carnages led by the Ottomans and many of the Kurdish tribes. It is true that these genocides that reached their peak in the summer of 1915, mainly targeted the Armenians, but that was not the whole truth of it. In fact, the Turkish resolved to eradicate all Christian existence without any distinction between an Assyrian, a Greek or an Armenian. Prior to these atrocious bloodbaths, the Ottomans overlooked the racial cleansing committed by the famous Kurdish leaders Mohammed Al Rawanduzi prince of Suran (1831-1836) and Baderkhan Beik prince of Butan (1843-1846), against the Assyrians in Hakkari, Turabdin, Zakho, Nouhdra (today’s Dohuk), Nineveh plain and Arbil. The racial cleansing campaigns committed by the Ottomans and the Kurds throughout a whole century, resulted most importantly in altering the ethnic, linguistic and religious map of all the peoples inhabiting the upper lands of the Tigris and Euphrates (northern Iraq and south east Turkey) in a manner that served the Kurds best. The irony in this matter resides in the fact that most of the Armenian and Assyrian historical homelands were occupied by Kurds and not by a Turkish or Arab majority…!? When one million Armenians and a half million Assyrian martyrs were victims of genocides conducted under the title of "Al Jihad" as well as national and religious fanaticism, the number of the Kurds at that particular period did not exceed 2.5 million according to most historians and orientalists, in all Persia and the Ottoman and Russian territories. Thus, Kurds were the sole beneficiaries from these acts of displacing Assyrians and Armenians from their historical homelands. This truth, supported by the current geographical and demographic facts of the northern Mesopotamia, was absent or ignored by the decision makers in the Sublime Porte earlier and in Baghdad and Damascus later.
‘’A call from the sons and grandsons of the martyrs of the Assyrian people’’
His Excellency Hovik Abrahamyan
Chaiman of National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
His Excellency Galust Sahakyan
Head of the Republican faction of National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
His ExcellencyVahan Hovhannisyan
Head of the ARF "Dashnaktsutyun" faction of National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
No land in the history of mankind has witnessed inhuman practices such as murder, destruction, cruelty and looting as Near East.
Its history is stained with the blood of the innocent victims.
Any comparison of such tragedies with the western counterpart did not rise to the level of the massacres committed against us.
Those massacres were horrible in its essence whether its length, areas covered and the number of victims which according to the all international agencies exceeded more than two millions Armenians, Assyrians, Greek and others in the beginning of the last century and exactly between the periods 1915-1919.
Seyfocenter – Continuing the Seyfo Center series of interviews with scholars of the Assyrian Genocide, Joseph Haweil spoke with Robert M. Kaplan, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong’s Graduate School of Medicine. Associate Professor Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist, writer and historian. He is a regular contributor to Australasian Psychiatry, a columnist for the Irish medical magazine Scope and has presented on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programmes. Associate Professor Kaplan has written widely on Jewish history, genocide, doctors and human rights abuse, psychiatry and other historical topics. He has a longstanding interest in genocide in the Middle East and has spoken regularly at Assyrian and Armenian functions committed to gaining recognition of the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek Genocide.
Associate Professor Kaplan’s latest book The Exceptional Brain: How It Changed History is to be published by Allen and Unwin in September.
Could you provide our readers with some information on your academic background?
I am a forensic psychiatrist with a position at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong. I am also a writer and historian with an interest in the history of medicine, genocide and pre-history. My background is Jewish and my grandparents, on both sides of the family, had to flee Tsarist Russia to avoid persecution. Some relatives who stayed were later killed by the Nazis. I have done some work with Holocaust survivors and had an interest in fake Holocaust claims.
By Benjamin Daniali
Ceres – California, Despite world’s economic difficulties and lack of support from the church, AssyriaSat’s annual telethon raised $238,000 this year. Even though the donation pledges were less than the previous years, they are still enough for AssyriaSat to maintain and expand the services during 2011.
Once again, Assyrians from all around the world recognized the pure nationalistic mission of Bet-Nahrain and its global TV channel.
"Another Assyrian opposition movement, the Bet-Nahrain Democratic Party (BNDP), advocates an autonomous state for Assyrians in Iraq. It is perhaps one of the most nationalistic of all Assyrian organizations and has its American base in Modesto, California." ~Jonathan Eric LewisDuring the last weekend, AssyriaSat TV station received thousands of calls from the Assyrians around the world donating towards the nationalistic cause of Bet-Nahrain. Some donors left encouraging and awakening messages such as, "Khaya Atour" (Long Live Assyria), "Alaha nadeerokhon o nader pelkhanokhoon" (God Bless you and your work), "In memory of Martyr Dr. Fraydoun Atouraya". A donor even felt an urge to clarify her nationality by saying, "Our last name is Kaldany, but we are Assyrian."