highlighting the total togetherness and musicianship of the live band."

In a review for The Independent, Roisin O'Connor stated, "Outside of that first solo, though, he’s an adept – and clearly improving – songwriter who seemed to require fewer co-writes than most major pop artists: his album’s title track is sensitive and endearingly romantic," giving the show in London 4 out of 5 stars. Matilda Elgood for Beat Magazine wrote, "Horan started the show gently, with "On the Loose", swiftly moving into crowd favourite "This Town". Horan has confidently distinguished himself away from the classic boy band sound of One Direction. And even though there was widespread doubt about the boys forging their own careers, Horan has successfully paved the way with his country flare." In his reviewFresh off of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election, Rudy Giuliani is going to Ukraine, where he will push a foreign power to continue investigations related to former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

President Trump's lawyer told The New York Times on Thursday that while in Kiev, he will encourage Ukrainian prosecutors to continue two investigations of interest to Trump: one that looks at Biden's son Hunter's involvement in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, and another regarding officials allegedly targeting Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, in order to benefit Hillary Clinton. Manafort, now a disbarred convicted felon, had done extensive work in Ukraine, and the officials deny opening any inquiries


But if you know that going in you make allowances and have fun!

Linda at Senor Frog's the young lady would tilt your head back, pour the drink in your mouth, grab your head and pull it between her boobs, shake your head back and forth between them, then she would quickly release your head, reach down and grab you nipples and twist and pinch them very hard. I'm a grown man. But she hurt!!!! I let out a squeal you could hear across the dance floor. BTW she (the server) is an equal opportunity provider! The only difference between her service to men or women is when serving a woman she does not pinch and twist. On a woman she just grabs the woman's boobs and give themSaints News

Fox after Wales revenge

SAINTS defender Danny Fox is hoping to complete his international rehabilitation when Scotland travel to Wales in their World Cup qualifier in October.

The 26-year-old Southampton left-back made his Scotland debut against the Welsh in a challenge match three years ago but, along with manager George Burley,
he was one of the casualties following a demoralising 3-0 defeat in Cardiff.

Fox’s international exile was ended when he was somewhat unexpectedly brought back into the team by Craig Levein for the 3-1 friendly win over Australia at Easter Road on Wednesday night, and he is
desperate to make the most of his second chance.

Wales are in Scotland’s 2014 World Cup qualifying group, and while the Scots’ campaign starts in September in a double-header against Serbia and Macedonia at Hampden,


ordered Merlin committed to the custody of the Department of Corrections for a term of six months.[1]
This proceeding arises from an incident which occurred at the Sears and Roebuck Store in Lake Charles, Louisiana. On December 31, 1979, at approximately 5:30 p. m. Merlin was attempting to return a heater that his mother had bought at Sears. Merlin brought the heater to the office of Elizabeth Jegelewicz, a store manager, complaining that the heater did not work and demanded a refund. Jegelewicz, accompanied by Merlin, took the heater to be checked at the Quick Service Department. The heater apparently worked and Jegelewicz informed Merlin that it was not normal procedure to give money back on something that was working properly. Merlin insisted on returning the heater and producedwould not make a refund Merlin became increasingly louder in his demand for a refund. Finally Jegelewicz told Merlin he was going to have to leave the store as he was being too loud and was creating a disturbance. Merlin reportedly said in a loud voice he was not going to leave the "damned" place until he got his money and that she could go ahead and call the police, which she did. Jegelewicz then escorted Merlin back to her office area where he took a seat in a chair in the entranceway of Jegelewicz's office to await the arrival of the police.
Sergeant William E. Bushnell of the Lake Charles Police Department responded to the call put out by police headquarters which reported that an intoxicated black male


subject was creating a disturbance in the paint section of Sears. Upon arrival at the store, Sgt. Bushnell was directed to Jegelewicz's office. Sgt. Bushnell talked first with Jegelewicz who pointed out Merlin as the one who created the disturbance and informed the officer that Merlin refused to leave after being so requested. Jegelewicz also related to the officer that because of Merlin's demeanor it was her opinion that Merlin was under the influence of alcohol and also that it was her suspicion that the *1082 heater was a stolen item because of the improper receipt which was produced in the attempt to get a refund.
Sgt. Bushnell approached Merlin and asked him for identification. Merlin did not have any identification and was not responsive to the questions ofthe officer. At that point Sgt. Bushnell was within a couple of feet of Merlin and, according to Sgt. Bushnell, he could smell alcohol on Merlin. Sgt. Bushnell then informed Merlin he was under arrest for disturbing the peace. Merlin was still sitting in the chair and refused to go with Sgt. Bushnell despite repeated explanations by the officer that he was under arrest and that he had to leave the store at that time with the officer. Merlin advised Sgt. Bushnell that he was not under arrest, that he would not go to jail, and that if the officer tried to take him out of that chair he was going to whip the officer. Sgt. Bushnell then placed his left hand on Merlin's right arm and told


Merlin to come along. When Sgt. Bushnell pulled on Merlin, Merlin started to strike the officer with his left hand. Anticipating the blow, Sgt. Bushnell hit Merlin and pulled him from the chair. A scuffle ensued and Merlin was finally subdued. As Sgt. Bushnell was removing Merlin from the store Merlin tried to break away, but was again subdued by the officer and then taken to police headquarters by two officers who had arrived in a police unit.
On January 3, 1980, the State of Louisiana filed a petition in the Juvenile Court of the Parish of Calcasieu alleging that the Juvenile Court had jurisdiction over Merlin and requesting he be adjudicated a delinquent child. The petition specifically alleged that Merlin was under seventeen years of age and thatdepartment using loud and profane language and had refused to leave the store after having been told to do so. While Jegelewicz was talking to Sgt. Bushnell, Merlin, sitting nearby, was uttering profanities in refutation to Jegelewicz's statements. As Sgt. Bushnell attempted to explain the situation to Merlin and question him as to his identity and the incident, Merlin, who smelled of alcohol, was uncooperative and abusive in his language. The fact that Merlin remained in the store where he had been forbidden to remain constituted an offense in progress. From the totality of these facts and circumstances Sgt. Bushnell was of the opinion that he could not have left Merlin in the store without creating a further disturbance and that he had probable cause to arrest Merlin


Sibel Irmak, PhD

Department / University Information

Biography

Dr. Sibel Irmak is a research Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, at University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA. She completed her Ph.D. (Chemistry) from Cukurova University, Adana/Turkey. She has got NZFUW/Daphne Purves Award presented by International Federation of University Women, (2000), Cukurova University International Publications Encouragement Award (BEDEK) and TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Encouragement Award for International Publications.

Research Interest

Production of biofuels, bioproducts and green chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass, Gasification of lignocellulosic biomass in aqueous media, Developing catalysts for green synthesis and biomass conversion using nanotechnological approaches, Extraction, purification and identification of bioactive compounds from various sources and Advanced oxidation processes for remediation of wastewater

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SciTechnol is an online publisher that enjoys global presence withThe votes are in... Man City's Etihad Airways Player of the Season has been chosen.

In association with the Official Manchester City Supporters Club, the first round of voting saw the full squad whittled down to three: Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva and .

The award is presented for standout performances throughout the season.

De Bruyne, with 16 assists, was up for his second award in a row after winning the Etihad Player of the Season vote last year.

Silva was yet to win the Manchester City Player of the Season award, but dazzled under Pep Guardiola.

And with 31 goals so far this season, Aguero was looking for his third Etihad prize.

So, who claimed the trophy? Watch the video below to find out...


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When making your reservations, please utilize the following company specific discount code and telephone number:L.A.M.B. Chops

Gwen Stefani on her hit addiction and kicking her Madonna habit

You know the story: Blond Italian-American pop diva, music video eminence, and all-round material girl marries a Brit artiste and moves to England. The relationship hits some bumps along the way, but a baby boy ensues and celebrity life keeps on rolling. "It is weird that we have all these similarities," Gwen Stefani allows as she nestles on a couch in one of the many rooms her entourage has taken in London's Landmark hotel in mid-November. With a voice that hovers somewhere between sultry and Kewpie doll, the singer has a knack for sounding about seven years old: "Madonna's had us over to dinner and stuff, and she's always been very nice to me."

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Undeniably, there


is scale to Madge's assault on the Old Country, everything from the horsey rural estate to the creeping mid-Atlantic accent. Stefani, by contrast, will lose her flat, half-swallowed Californian vowels when hell freezes over, and anyway, she hasn't even truly relocated to England; she and Brit rocker husband Gavin Rossdale have for the past 10 years split their time between the house in London's tony Primrose Hill (neighbors on either side are Jude Law and his ex, Sadie Frost) and a manse in L.A. But if Madonna does it bigger, it is no longer heresy to suggest that musically, Stefani does it every bit as well. After 17 years of fronting the redoubtable rock/ska/reggae band No Doubt (she should make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame onup in the studio with a blurry succession of dream-team producers all vying for that one megahit (can you spell bananas?), tape everything, toss it up in the air, and see what sticks. A likely recipe for disaster (which No Doubt purists, partial to human beings playing actual drums and bass, may well judge), but it works, mostly due to Stefani's feckless, reckless impulse to try anything that pops into her head. Nothing is more out there than the album's first single and video, "Wind It Up"—typically sinister Neptunes beats and Stefani, backed by a symphony orchestra, singing fragments lifted from The Sound of Music's "The Lonely Goatherd." (Yes, that's right: "High on a hill was a lonely goatherd/ Lay, odl ay odl ay hee hoo.")

"Some people are


pop music. At any moment, it seems, the Landmark could turn into a pumpkin. "The hotel maid walked by today," she says, "and she's really pretty and she probably comes from Poland. And here I am about to spend a lot of money on room service and I was thinking, I could have been a maid." Actually, Stefani grew up solidly middle-class in Anaheim, the second of four kids in a tight-knit family headed by folk-music-loving parents (dad Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive; Patti was an accountant before becoming a full-time mom). Teenage Gwen was mad for clothes and jumped-up Jamaican-rooted ska music, then enjoying one of its periodic revivals. In '87, her older brother, Eric, formed No Doubt and persuaded his bopping little sister to singin the band and that, aside from a little college on the fly, would be her life: near-constant touring and a steady romance with the band's bassist, Tony Kanal. The Cinderella theme kicked in big time with No Doubt's hit third album, 1995's Tragic Kingdom (Anaheim being home to Disney's Magic Kingdom, after all), which transformed the Southern California party band into a pop/rock juggernaut. By then, Tony and Gwen had broken up (providing the raw material for "Don't Speak") and Eric had decamped to become an animator with The Simpsons. But the band chugged on through 2001's Rock Steady, by which time all four No Doubters were desperate for a break. (Kanal has since emerged as one of Stefani's trusted studio collaborators.) As to whether the success


of solo Gwen means the end of No Doubt, Stefani says she hopes not: "I'm looking forward to going back to my little musical family and trying to write a song," she says. But for the tween girls who are the core of her solo fan base, No Doubt, much beloved by young men, would fall squarely into the "No Clue" department.

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With hubby Rossdale in L.A. recording with Pharrell, Stefani has turned over the London Primrose Hill house to her parents, visiting from Anaheim and eager, like the rest of her inner circle, to get some quality time with their six-month old grandson, Kingston. ("He's pretty rad," Kingston's mom says.) For nine days, Stefani has moved into the Landmark with a small army ofpublicists and managers, transforming one of the city's swankier hotels into a field headquarters for the first campaign of a global publicity push behind The Sweet Escape.

"I'm so exhausted," Stefani announces as she walks into her personal assistant's hotel room. But just because Cinderella is in a mood doesn't mean she's a diva. ("The ghastly thing about her is that she is a really decent human being," says her pal Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson.) Fame and talent aside, Stefani is the mall girl next door, one who's very in touch with her emotions. When she's up, she's up, when she's down, she cries easily, and she's particularly sensitive in matters of physical appearance. Trailed from city to city by a retinue of hair and skin and clothes handlers


same things," she tells me. "That I'm smaller than they expected and that I look better in real life. Which is kind of a backhanded compliment."

True enough. The early No Doubt Gwen, the adorable ska kid with a little baby fat, has been updated into a striking 37-year-old woman with angular features and a trim, honed physique. And then there's the hair, which serves as a kind of Stefani mood ring, never more dramatically than in 2000 when she broke up with Rossdale (temporarily) and opted for the startling pink do that graced the cover of No Doubt's Return to Saturn. She's since gone back to Jean Harlow platinum, an over-the-top shade that can be seen to good effect in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, Stefani's chance to playher Hollywood avatar for about three minutes of screen time, hanging off the arm of Leo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes. (The movie experience seems to have slaked her once-ardent film ambitions, but she says, "If Martin Scorsese called me up again....")

Hair color notwithstanding, the past four years have been anything but a cakewalk. After her 2002 marriage to her English rocker, she learned that Rossdale had fathered an illegitimate child, now a teenager. Stefani's lyrics tend to read like blog entries from her own tumultuous Planet Relationship, so fans interpreted "Danger Zone," off her first album, as her stinging retort: "Are your secrets where you left them?/ 'Cause now your ghosts are mine as well." (In this instance, the fans were wrong; the song was written before the revelation,


says. She may be getting the hang of the England thing after all.

The next day, I follow Stefani to the KISS radio station to watch her make nice over the English airwaves. It's an entourage production, but in addition to the usual handlers we get an appearance by the beguiling Kingston Rossdale, who holds court in the waiting lounge under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. "Kingston is so chill," Stefani says. "He goes with me everywhere, 'cause I'm still nursing. He's been to every studio in L.A., New York, London. He lives up to his name—total Rasta boy. He gives me real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him." According to Manson, Stefani functions bafflinglyStefani seems to reconcile opposites—humble celebrity, femme jock, surrealist material girl—and has ever since the early No Doubt days when she was the girl in the guys' band touring the rock dives of America in a van. "I would 'go off' in the mosh pit," she says, "but I was always very glamorous before I dove in."


Tozacatl

The tozacatl was an indigenous pre-Columbian Mesoamerican musical instrument, a type of "sounding cane". An 1884 work described the instrument as "a long cane, bent round like an Alpine horn."

References

Category:Mesoamerican musical instruments
Category:AerophonesOverview

While 18-year-old Victoria Victoria Hamilton struggles to escape the rule of her domineering mother Penelope Wilton, King William IV dies and the teenager assumes the throne as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. With the help of sympathetic advisers and her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Lehzen Diana Rigg, Victoria asserts herself, relocating her mother's living quarters and dismissing her mother's overbearing supporter, Sir John Conroy Patrick Malahide. She then reluctantly agrees to invite her ...

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Overview

While 18-year-old Victoria Victoria Hamilton struggles to escape the rule of her domineering mother Penelope Wilton, King William IV dies and the teenager assumes the throne as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. With the help of sympathetic advisers and her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Lehzen Diana Rigg,


Victoria asserts herself, relocating her mother's living quarters and dismissing her mother's overbearing supporter, Sir John Conroy Patrick Malahide. She then reluctantly agrees to invite her first cousin, Albert Jonathan Firth, prince-consort of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany, to the royal household as a possible match for her. Remembering him from childhood, she thinks him a bore. But when grown-up Albert arrives, Victoria falls madly in love with him. After they marry, Victoria must counter troublemaking political schemers on the one hand while attempting to assuage a disenchanted Albert on the other. The problem is that he has nothing to do. He is merely an ornament, albeit a cherished one. He cannot even command a servant to clean a fireplace. However, when the administration of the queen's friend and adviser PrimeMinister Melbourne Nigel Hawthorne collapses, Albert becomes Victoria's partner in government as well as in marriage. In time, she realizes that her husband is really a co-ruler: "A king," she says, "in everything but name." Together, they reign over their empire -- and their brood of nine children. It is Albert's task to supervise the country's Great Exhibition of 1851 to promote British pride, commerce, and industry. But his untiring efforts to make the exhibit a success take their toll on him, and he falls ill. However, he tenaciously clings to life -- and Victoria -- and lives another decade before typhoid fever claims him in 1862, leaving behind a distraught Victoria and a monarchy he helped rescue.

Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide
- Mike Cummings

After presenting highly acclaimed adaptations of


fictional works such as Pride and Prejudice and Lorna Doone, A&E debuted this docudrama in 2001 -- and again earned favorable reviews. The production centers on the romance and marriage of the last of the English Hanover monarchs, Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India, and her first cousin, Albert (1819-1861), prince-consort of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany. The script skillfully intertwines the main plot, the love affair of Victoria and Albert, with subplots about political and familial discord that threaten to undermine Victoria's ability to choose a husband and rule independently. Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth are delightful as Victoria and Albert. Portraying the royal couple as reserved and dignified but with minds of their own, they animate the film with memorable scenes, inparticular one in which they play a lively piano duet and another in which diffident Victoria proposes to diffident Albert. Peter Ustinov is superb as crotchety King William IV, who dotes on his appealing niece and heir presumptive, Victoria, and vilifies her overbearing shrew of a mother (Penelope Wilton). The dinner scene, in which attendants carry the ailing king through a receiving line, serves up an épée de combat of verbal thrusts and parries that foretell hard times ahead for young Victoria. Then the king has the decency to die to allow Victoria to assume the throne, discover herself, and work against her nefarious mother and the scheming Sir John Conroy (Patrick Malahide). The plot thickens into a robust soup when, after the wedding, Albert discovers he has


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Assistant Professor of Art Todd Anderson is a printmaker, skilled at transferring beauty and wonder from landscapes onto paper. His most recent project, The Last Glacier, involved hiking more than 500 miles through Glacier National Park over the last six years.

The South Carolina Botanical Garden may be located at the intersection of Perimeter Road and Highway 76, but a visit there will allow you to travel the entire state of South Carolina in less than 300 acres.

Astrophysicist Sean Brittain straddles two worlds

Sean Brittain has used some of the world’s most powerful telescopes to study the chaos swirling around a young star about 335 light years from Earth. Huge chunks of rock are slamming together to form what could be the first planets of a budding solar system.

Back homeMonday, October 31, 2011

Bat Ye'or has carved out an impressive name for herself as the pioneering researcher into 'Dhimmitude'. Less well known is the saga of her exile from Egypt in 1956. In this interview with Jerry Gordon in the New English Review, she gives a graphic but lyrical description of her family's dislocation. (With thanks: Eliyahu)

Jerry Gordon: Bat Ye’or, thank you for consenting to this interview.

Bat Ye’or: Thank you for inviting me.

Jerry Gordon: You were born and raised in Egypt. Could you tell us about your family’s heritage?

Bat Ye’or: I was born in a family of mixed heritage. My mother was French and grew up in Paris. Her mother, who was British, had married a Frenchman. They were emancipated and non-observant Jews, well integrated into French culture,


counting among their family painters and writers. Members of my mother’s family were also living in Egypt and were prominent leaders of the Alexandrine Jewish community.The picture was very different on my father’s side. The Orebi were observant Italian Jews, who spoke Arabic, several other languages and were less Westernized. My grand-father received the title of Bey under the last Ottoman sultan. He died when my father was thirteen years old.Both families were related and belonged to the same educated and wealthy Westernized Jewish bourgeoisie, sharing the same social milieu. My mother loved reading and followed the cultural events in France. She gave us her taste for literature. We always had plenty of books at home. As far as I can remember, I was always reading.

After the Italianracial laws were decreed by Mussolini in 1938, my father requested Egyptian nationality that had been established only in 1924. Usually it was denied to Jews, but he did obtain it. He could hardly guess then, that less then 20 years later he would leave Egypt stripped of everything, including his nationality.

Jerry Gordon: What was it like growing up as a Jew in Egypt prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948?

Bat Ye’or: In my childhood we were more worried by the Nazi advance toward Alexandria and the war in Europe. In Egypt we knew about the extermination of European Jewry, my mother worried about her parents living in occupied Paris, wearing the yellow star. Her two brothers and uncles were hiding in the so-called


a climate of fear and insecurity shrouded us. Violent pogroms erupted; mobs killed Jews in the street, raped Jewish women, vandalized Jewish shops, and burned Jewish schools and hospitals. All Jewish assets were sequestered, including those of my father. Jews were fired from administrative jobs and liberal professions. We lived with the fear that life could end at any moment.

During WWII, the Jewish Palestinian soldiers in the British army had trained the young Egyptian Jews for self-defense and as Zionists. Hence the Jewish quarter could be defended when attacked and young Zionists could clandestinely reach Palestine.

Jerry Gordon: After the Revolt of the Free Officers Movement in 1952 and toppling of the aristocracy under King Farouk I, were restrictions placed on the Egyptian Jewish community?

Bat Ye’or: The restrictions ofbecame so precious. In the last months preceding our departure, I walked alone throughout Cairo and Alexandria, their old quarters, their museums and every place that now was deserted of friends and family. For years I was fascinated by Egyptology, art and history. I knew I would never see these treasures again.

We left at night in secret. My father and mother could hardly walk. Thanks to a lawyer my father had at last sold a parcel of land. The proceeds from this sale, together with my mother’s jewels were sent out of the country through a clandestine channel. The Swiss consulate gave us a Nansen passport since Egyptian Jews were allowed to leave Egypt only on condition that they renounce their nationality and all their belongings in Egypt


life, where we would destroy our past to build the future. It was my first night in exile.Read article in full

Sunday, October 30, 2011

If anyone is going to prove that Jews in Tunisia have a future after last week's elections - it is Patrick Sebag.

While Sebag's interests - pig-farming and distilling alcohol, among others - may be unusual to us, to the resurgent Islamists of the Ennahda party, winners of 40 percent of the vote, they will seem a red rag to a bull - breaking two Muslim taboos at once.

Yet according to an upbeat article in the Tunisian magazine Tunisie-Mag, Sebag, who owns one of Tunis' top disco-bars and a tourist village, has chosen this critical time in Tunisian politics to announce that he will be investing250,000 dinars in G'est Hotel, a new tourist village.

Another Tunisian-Jewish property developer active in Djerba, Gabriel Kabla is about to invest 150,000 dinars.

The article triumphantly declares that despite predictions of a mass exodus when the Arab Spring erupted, Tunisia is still home to some 1,500 Jews. This is all the more remarkable as the Jews are strongly identified with the deposed Ben Ali regime.

But Jews are attempting to engage with the new political reality. Not one, but two Jews have stood in the elections - Elie Trabelsi and Gilles-Jacob Lellouche. (Neither was elected.)

The article also reveals that the leader of the Jewish community, Roger Bismuth, has had discreet talks with the Ennahda party to seek reassurances that the Jewish community has a future.

It would be nice to share


called David Gerbi was bundled out of Tripoli in a military plane. Was any hope that post-Gaddafi Libya could become a tolerant and pluralistic society flown out with him?

Gerbi, a 56-year old Jewish psychiatrist, had returned to his native Libya after 44 years of exile in Rome to assist the anti-Gaddafi rebels. His dream was to spend the high holidays praying in Tripoli's Dar al-Bishi synagogue.

With the blessing of a local sheikh, Gerbi took a sledgehammer to the sealed entrance. The building had stood derelict since the remaining Jews were expelled in 1967, his family among them. The international news media captured the incongruous sight of Gerbi, wrapped in his tallit, praying amid the rubble.

Gerbi's hurried exit had to be arranged by the Italian government after he receivedrid of them.

The Jews had a place in Libya long before the Arabs. The community goes back 2,300 years, predating Islam by a millenium. But, after hundreds died during the Second World War and in a devastating pogrom in 1945, more than 90 per cent of the 38,000-strong community fled to Israel. The remaining 6,000 Jews were driven out in 1967, their property confiscated by Gaddafi.

From almost one million Jews in Arab lands in 1948, only 4,000 remain. Antisemitism has reached fever pitch. Arabs are so unlikely to meet a Jew that satanic conspiracy theories flourish. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, this year has seen attacks on two synagogues and a raid on a wedding party on the island of Djerba, still home to 1,500 Jews.


did visit Baghdad in 2004. Marina Benjamin observed in her book The Last Jews of Babylon: "In the postwar atmosphere of hatred and suspicion Jews were once again the bogeyman. Variously portrayed as friends of the foreign occupier, Zionist spies, or simply as individuals returning under cover of false identities to reclaim property stolen from them in 1951, the Jews were not to be trusted." The antisemitism she witnessed in Iraq is now so virulent that there are desperate efforts to get the seven remaining Iraqi Jews out to safety after their names were revealed by Wikileaks.

In Egypt, where the "Jewish community" is now just a handful of old ladies, "Jew" is a term of abuse employed to smear political opponents or foreigners. In February, it was enoughShabi, author of Not the enemy, has something of a reputation for pushing the myth of Jewish-Arab coexistence - an idyll, she believes, cruelly shattered by Israel's creation. Perhaps she was not the best person for The Jewish Chronicle to ask to report on the aftermath of the Islamist victory in the Tunisian elections. My 'fisking' appears in italics:

"They naturally have a majority," says Tunisia's Jewish community leader, Roger Bismuth. "But more important is what is going to happen in the next few weeks."

As the Islamist Nahda party secured about 40 per cent of the vote in Tunisia's historic elections this week, the country's tiny Jewish community was wondering what this means for them.

These were the first free elections in Tunisia, and the first in the Arab Spring


after a string of uprisings brought down reviled dictators earlier this year.

Now, the Nahda party will need to form a coalition with secular, centre-left parties - and already has pledged to put in place a democratic system that will safeguard minorities.

Oh yes? How can a democratic system safeguarding minority rights be compatible with Shari'a law?

Among a national population of just over 10 million, Tunisia's Jewish community stands at around 1,500. Once it was 100,000, but Israel's creation in 1948 and Tunisia's independence from French rule in 1956 together resulted in a Jewish exodus.

It was not Israel's creation which resulted in a Jewish exodus - it was the Arab response to Israel's creation, scapegoating their innocent Jewish citizens. It was not Tunisian independence, per se, it was the deliberateJews live on the island of Djerba, whose Jewish history, including one of the oldest synagogues in the world, is carefully preserved.

There is a good reason for the preservation of the Djerba synagogue - it is the island's only tourist attraction.

Another community, in the port town of La Goulette, near Tunis, is home to the country's only Jewish candidate in the recent elections: Jacob Lellouche, representing the Republican People's Union (UPR), a small, leftist party.

He did not win a seat in the new assembly, which is mandated to draft the country's constitution and set an election date within a year. "But I am really proud to have participated," says the 50-year-old, who owns a kosher restaurant in La Goulette. "Now we all have a lot of work to


change."

Albert Chiche could have said, 'we hug, but the embrace is squeezing the lifeblood out of us.' The Jewish community in Tunisia is one percent of what it was, and any attempt to put a positive spin on this massive exercise in ethnic cleansing is disingenuous.

This story from the Jewish Journal of LA is two years old now, but I am posting it to put on record the rise of antisemitism in Indonesia, ' the world's most populous Muslim democracy'. The community in Surabaya was founded by Iraqi Jews. There are only two dozen, intermarried, Jews living there now:(with thanks: Andrew)

Last October (2009), when Muslim extremists threatened to burn down the only synagogue still standing in the Republic of Indonesia, Saul Abraham, 69, the synagogue’s caretaker, and hisyounger brother, Alfred, 66, fled the country.

“We left the same night,” Saul said, in the LAX lounge with his Los Angeles-based relatives, waiting for the flight that will carry the brothers off to what they believe is their only real haven: Israel.

Fearing for their lives, the brothers, both retired technicians, booked the first flight to the West Coast via Singapore without any time to pack or say goodbye to friends in their native Surabaya. They were welcomed in Los Angeles by their eldest brother, Jacob (real name withheld upon request), an L.A. resident since 1976, and sister Lily, 67, an L.A. resident since 1990. Lily decided to move to Israel, too.

'The Islam is very bad there,” Alfred said of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.


Saul and Alfred are fluent in Dutch and Indonesian and proficient in Arabic. They speak some English and no Hebrew. Jacob, a retired lawyer, served as the family’s unofficial spokesman and translator. The Muslims never torched the 60-year-old synagogue and the million-dollar property on which it is situated, Jacob said. Indigent Indonesian Jews who are housed on the property protested. The Muslims are expected to leave the synagogue alone in part because it is now under the care of an assimilated Jewish couple whose children are intermarried. An estimated 25 to 30 Jews live in Surabaya today.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Hebrew inscription at the shrine of Ezra the Scribe in Amarah province, Iraq

A Jewish shrine in Iraq has been converted into a mosque 'for commercial reasons', although the localShi'as had no tradition of revering the shrine as a Muslim holy place. (With thanks: Sami)

An Iraqi gentleman by the name of Hussain Hilli wrote to Professor Shmuel Moreh, formerly head of the Arabic studies department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, quoting an article in the Arabic press by Ali Elumeiri alleging that the ignorance of simple Iraqis is being abused by 'turbaned people' (ie mullahs) on the make. These mullahs are "far from the real Islam and its sublime principles. This intention to keep people ignorant, is in order to acquire illegal and forbidden wealth," Elumeiri writes.

Elumeiri recalls visiting the shrine of Ezra the Scribe at al-Uzair in Amarah province as a child. No one used to visit it as a religious Muslim shrine, he reported,


but Muslims treated it as a historic site and came to see its ornamentation and Hebrew inscriptions.

By turning the site into a Muslim shrine the 'turbaned religious people' were able to split the income earned from the visitors with the local rabbi. "What is important is that they get some profit in their pockets. This is what is happening in Iraq since the US invasion."

The Los Angeles Times blog and Israel National News carred reports three years ago revealing the fact that the shrine was now being revered as a Muslim holy site. Repairs to the shrine in 2000 were thought to have been paid for by the tiny Jewish community in Baghdad.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry document from 1961, recently reprinted here, provides a useful overview of thenationality.” A special custodian of Jewish property was appointed, who began immediately to sell it by public auction.

To speed up the departure of the Jewish community, the Iraqi Government set a time limit for it, fixing 21 June as the final date. As a further incentive a series of laws was enacted designed to make the position of the Jews in the country untenable. Restrictions were imposed on their movements. They were barred from schools, hospitals and other public institutions. They were refused import and export licences for carrying on their business. At the same time the arrests continued. So effective were these oppressive measures that by mid-July 1950 over 110,000 Iraqi Jews had registered for emigration and by June 1951 had left for Israel. By the end


of 1951, the number of Iraqi Jews transferred to Israel amounted approximately to 125,000. Most of them were brought over by chartered aircraft. They arrived utterly destitute, carrying small bags which held all their belongings. Such was the end of what had been for centuries the most prosperous and cultured Jewish community of the East--a community which could trace its history back for more than 2,000 years, centuries before the Arabs had come to Iraq.

Operation “Magic Carpet”:The mass transfer of the Jews of Yemen to Israel differed in significant aspects from that of Iraqi Jewry. The modern immigration of Yemenite Jews had begun in the eighteen-eighties, when about 2,500 of them made their homes in Jerusalem and Jaffa. During the last few years before the First World Waranother 1,500 entered the country and settled in the villages of Judaea, Samaria and Galilee. The outbreak of the war interrupted this movement. When, after the First World War, Yemen became fully independent, the degrading anti-Jewish decrees were re-enacted, in particular that which required the compulsory conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam. There was a renewal of immigration to the Holy Land, though this involved the confiscation of the property of those who left.

After the Palestine Arab riots of 1929, the Imam of Yemen forbade the emigration of Jews to the Holy Land, so they had to escape secretly to the British-held port of Aden. There they lived for years in utter penury. In the final phase of the Second World War, when Jewish immigration from Europe was


blocked, about 4,000 Yemenite Jews who had so escaped to Aden were admitted to Palestine. Altogether 17,000 Jews entered the country by way of Aden from 1923 to 1945, bringing the total of Yemenite Jews in Palestine in that year to approximately 22,000.

At the end of the Second World War, the trek to the Holy Land was resumed. Thousands of Jews streamed to Aden, but the Palestine immigration restrictions hindered their transfer, and they languished for several years in Aden, their number steadily increased by newcomers from the interior. After the UN decision of November, 1947, to partition Palestine, serious riots broke out in Aden itself. Many Jews were killed and the Jewish quarter was burned down. It was only in September 1948, five months after the establishmentof the State of Israel, that the authorities in Aden permitted the refugees to proceed to their destination. As the sea passage was closed to these immigrants because the Egyptians controlled the Suez Canal and the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, they had to be brought over by plane. By March 1949, all the Yemenite refugees in Aden had been transferred to Israel.

In the meantime, there had been a palace revolution in Yemen. The aged Imam Yahya had been murdered and two of his sons contested the throne. Anarchy prevailed and the Jews were the prime sufferers by it, robbed left and right by the troops of either side. After lengthy negotiations, the British authorities in Aden agreed to permit the departure of Jewish emigrants from that


the end of yet another great Jewish community in the Arab world whose origins went back to the days of the Bible. “In spite of all the difficulties encountered,” wrote a visitor from Israel, “it was a very different liquidation from that in the countries under Nazi control. No graves were dug, no doxology was sung. A whole living community with their Holy Books were saved from peril and degradation and brought over to Israel 'on the wings of eagles', as they themselves termed it in biblical phrase.”

Syria and Lebanon:At the time of the last census in 1943, the Jewish community of Syria numbered approximately 29,000, of whom 11,000 lived in Damascus and 17,000 in Aleppo. Four years later, the total had dwindled to 13,000. By 1960, onlyof restrictions had been imposed on the Syrian Jews. They were no longer permitted to buy and sell property, and their bank accounts were frozen. Some of these restrictions have now been lifted, but anyone desiring to leave the country is still required to turn over his immovable property to the Government. The economic condition of the small Jewish remnant is such that it has to rely on assistance from abroad to maintain its communal institutions.

Arab smugglers sometimes cruelly exploited the Jews who put their fate into their hands. In November 1950, 30 Syrian Jews were smuggled out of Syria by a band of Arab seamen who promised to bring them to Israel. Halfway between Beirut and Haifa, the Arabs turned on their passengers, stripped them of their


valuables, murdered them in cold blood and threw their bodies overboard.

Libya:Iraq and Yemen were not the only Arab countries from which the Jewish communities had to be transferred.

In Libya there lived about 35,000 Jews, of whom two-thirds were resident in Tripoli and the remainder in Benghazi and the smaller towns. They had suffered terribly during the war years, when the country was under Axis control, many of them having died in the concentration camp at Giado from ill-treatment and disease. After its liberation, Libya came under British occupation, but the anti-Jewish propaganda conducted by the Arab League created new frictions and dangers for the Jews. A leading part in this campaign of incitement was taken by the Egyptian teachers and businessmen who came to Tripoli as officials ofthe British occupying authorities. When, in November 1945, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Egypt, organized Moslem mobs also attacked the Jewish quarter in Tripoli. In a pogrom which lasted three days, from 4 to 7 November, 130 Jews, women and children among them, were brutally murdered. Many were compelled to abjure their faith and embrace Islam in order to save their lives. Houses, shops and cinemas were looted and burnt down. In the wake of this savagery more than 31,000 Jews left for Israel. Since then, another 2,000 have come to settle here. Like the Jewish communities of Iraq and Yemen, Libyan Jewry has practically ceased to exist.

Egypt:At the time of the last Egyptian census held in 1947, 65,639 Jews were reported to be resident there. Unofficial estimates


put the number as high as 90,000, which included Jews possessing British, French, Greek or Italian citizenship. The figure has now dwindled to 14,000, When, in 1948, Egypt joined the other Arab countries in invading Israel, it promulgated a series of anti-Jewish decrees and took severe measures against those suspected of “Zionist” activities. Much Jewish property was confiscated. Hundreds of Jewish families were driven out of their homes. Bombs were thrown into Jewish houses, causing heavy casualties in dead or wounded. On several occasions there were mob invasions of the Jewish quarter of Cairo, in which a number of Jews were killed and their houses and shops pillaged. The Jews of Egypt have since lived in a state of constant terror. A precipitate night began. By October-November 1950,approximately 27,000 had left the country. Of these, over 21,000 found sanctuary in Israel.

In November 1956, following the Sinai crisis, a ruthless expulsion of the Jewish community began. Hundreds were arrested and imprisoned under wretched conditions in Cairo and other cities. They included practically every leader in Egyptian-Jewish communal life. In the approved Nazi fashion they were led through the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, stoned and vilified by Arab hooligans. During the first three days of internment the men were kept without food. At the same time, a mass eviction of Jews began; thousands were notified that they had to go or face imprisonment. In the beginning, these measures were confined to the families of foreign Jews, many of whom had been resident in Egypt for generations


past but had not been granted Egyptian citizenship. Gradually, however, the Egyptian Government began to enlarge its target. At the end of November 1956, its Minister for Religious Affairs caused an order of the Government to be read out in every mosque, stating that all Jews in Egypt were regarded as enemies of the country who would soon be expelled, and urging the population to refrain from any contact with them. Many Jews were interned and released only after signing formal declarations to the effect that they were ready to leave the country and would never return to it. They were also required to renounce all financial claims and to transfer to the Egyptian Government all assets they had left behind. Many of them were forced at gun-pointto sign these declarations or beaten up till they agreed to do so. Those fortunate enough to get a passage were allowed to take with them only one suitcase of clothing and twenty Egyptian pounds. Following these steps, a whole complex of anti-Jewish measures was enforced; bank accounts were blocked, private and commercial property was confiscated, business firms were liquidated and Jewish employees dismissed. Jewish department stores, banks and other firms of long standing were sequestered. The value of the Jewish assets so confiscated or frozen ran into hundreds of millions of dollars. A special proclamation authorized the appointment of an administrator of the sequestered business firms with power to dispose of their claims and assets. The proclamation prohibited all direct or indirect transactions with any establishment whose


property had been sequestered, and barred the execution of any contract concluded by them or for their benefit. These decrees were drastically enforced. The bulk of Jewish property in Egypt thus passed into Government hands.

The Jewish community was stripped of its communal assets as well. Jewish hospitals were taken over by the Egyptian army. The famous old synagogue in Cairo ceased to be an institution for religious worship and was turned into a Government-sponsored tourist attraction. Most of the smaller synagogues were closed. The activities of the Rabbinate were reduced to a minimum because of the lack of funds and the continued departure of large numbers of the community. Jewish lawyers who were Egyptian nationals were expelled from the bar. Jewish engineers were denied the right to exercisetheir profession. The Egyptian populace was directed by the Medical Association of Egypt not to consult Jewish physicians or surgeons. Many of the Jews who went abroad left behind large fortunes, apartment houses, land and commercial enterprises. Before departing they were searched and had to surrender all their personal belongings. Of those who went out of Egypt as a result of these official measures, 15,000 Jews came to settle in Israel. All in all, some 36,000 Jews from Egypt have come to live in Israel since the establishment of the State.

The Maghreb:In the three Moslem countries of Northwest Africa known as the Maghreb--Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco--populous Jewish communities had been settled for many centuries. Their total number, according to recent official estimates, was approximately 400,000. For centuries they


220,000 in Morocco, over 100,000 are beggars living in conditions of utter destitution.”2

The spread of Arab nationalism to the countries of North Africa has further aggravated the position of the Jewish communities there. The legal status and economic position they had enjoyed under French rule became imperilled. According to official estimates, the Jews of Algeria until recently had numbered between 120,000 and 130,000. The prolonged conflict between the French authorities and the “Front de la Liberation Nationale” rendered their situation most difficult and led to a progressive exodus from the country. Wedged in between the extremists on both sides, the Jews suffered many fatalities at the hands of terrorists. Since synagogues and Jewish schools were often located in Arab neighbourhoods, access to them became unsafe. In Algiers, theGreat Synagogue had to be closed. During the anti-French outbreaks which occurred at the time of President de Gaulle's visit to Algiers in December 1960, that ancient House of Prayer was invaded by Arab mobs who tore the Holy Scrolls to pieces, broke the memorial stones for the dead off the walls and turned the whole place into a shambles. What the future may hold in store for the Jews of Algeria was indicated by a statement made on 27 January, 1961, by a spokesman of the “Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic” in Tunisia, in which he declared that the FLN was opposed to the emigration of Jews to Israel. In the light of the present position of the Jews in Morocco and other Arab countries which


the solemn undertakings given by that State when it attained independence and was admitted to the United Nations Organization. Freedom of movement and emigration does not exist for Jews. Postal and telegraphic communications between the Jews who live in Morocco and their families in Israel have been severed by the Government of Morocco. Jewish schools are being progressively taken over. Jewish families live in constant dread of detention and assault, of kidnapping and violence. An atmosphere of terror and insecurity, both physical and mental, prevails among the quarter of a million Jews of Morocco, and it is no wonder that they seek to flee for their lives and join their near and dear ones in Israel. They take flight in the full knowledge of the dangers that lieconcentration and DP camps. They all arrived at a time when the State was still in its infancy, struggling for its political and economic survival, and the country was suffering from a great dearth of food, equipment and buildings. The administrative, educational, social and health services of the new State were still in the process of being built up. The rehabilitation and integration of the newcomers constituted a major charge on the financial resources of the country. In fact, the entire economic and fiscal policy of the State was geared to the overriding task of providing them with homes and work. It has involved heavy sacrifices, lengthy periods of unemployment and a regime of severe austerity for the entire population. The integration was assisted by the generous financial


support of the Jewish communities throughout the world, in particular of American Jewry, and by the economic aid of friendly Governments, but the brunt of this unprecedented challenge inevitably had to be borne by the people of Israel themselves.

Refugee settlement in Israel has not been the work of a select group of philanthropists and social workers. It has been a national effort. It could not have succeeded if it had not been so. The refugees were accepted from the moment of their arrival as free and equal members of society. They were not, as elsewhere, confined in camps. They were allowed to go freely to work.

During the initial phase they were temporarily housed on the outskirts of the towns and in rural areas, where they remained until workand permanent housing could be found for them. No less than 80% of the 125,000 Jews who came from Iraq, for instance, were at first so accommodated. The remaining 20% were either fixed up provisionally with relatives and friends in towns and villages or, if they were social cases, taken to hospitals and institutions. The same procedure was followed in the case of the immigrants from the Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and other Moslem countries. Until work could be found for them, the Jewish Agency bore the expenses of their maintenance, but as the rural development and public works schemes of the Government matured, they had little difficulty in securing employment.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

'Happily and freely' is how the Jews have always lived in Tunisia, and


progressive social history could be a model for Islamist parties elsewhere.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source".

But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways - it was also the basis of Egypt's largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi's era that he said was in conflict with Sharia - that banning polygamy.

In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya's economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line withSharia. "Interest creates disease and hatred among people," he said.

Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslim countries, have pioneered the development of Sharia-compliant banks which charge fees rather than interest for loans but they normally run alongside western-style banks.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Is Jacob Lellouche the Tunisian David Gerbi? Both men, in different ways, are trying to test the waters in the emerging 'democracies' of North Africa. The Jewish restauranteur Lellouche is standing in the Tunisian elections, his goal to show that the Jewish minority wants to participate fully in political life. Report in the Jerusalem Post (With thanks: Andrew):

Update: Jacob Lellouche did not get elected, and his party did not even get a seat in the Tunisian parliament.

Jacob Lellouche might have been the only non-Muslim


“neither right nor left.”

If elected, he vowed to speak on behalf of all the country’s minorities.

“I will try to represent in this assembly the minorities, not the Jewish one alone, because I think I am the only non-Muslim guy running in the election,” he said.

The historic day began at 7 a.m. for Lellouche, when he paid a visit to the polling station in the Tunis suburb of La Goulette where he lives, escorted by his 85-yearold mother.

“She insisted on being the first to cast her vote,” he said.

From there he continued to his restaurant where he serves regular local fare like couscous with meat and vegetables to dozens of hungry clients. The rookie politician said he planned to spend the rest of the day walking around town soakingup the festive atmosphere.

When the revolution first broke out last year there was concern the country’s Jews might be targeted by Islamic extremists. However, with few exceptions – like the torching of a makeshift synagogue in the South and the harassment of Jewish worshipers by Muslim protesters in Tunis – there has been little to no violence directed at the country’s Jewish community so far, which numbers about 1,500 out of a population of more than 10 million.*

Lellouche said he never felt he was in serious danger.

“Lag Ba’omer festivities on the island of Jerba were canceled by the rabbi of Tunis, Haim Bitan, and with the agreement of the Tunisian government, but that was because there were safety problems in the beginning of the revolution in all Tunisia,”


communities of the Arab world.

Pierre Rehov is the man who made the first film on the forgotten Jewish refugees from Arab lands: 'The Silent Exodus' in 2004. 'The Jewish Nakbah' page has links to the film, as well as to arresting images of Jews fleeing the Arab world. As you would expect, Rehov, who fled Algeria with his Jewish family aged nine, has quite a bit of archive material on the subject.

The intention is publically to mark the uprooting of the ancient Jewish communities on a specific day in the calendar. The suggestion came originally from Ada Aharoni, an Egyptian-born professor at Haifa university. Professor Aharoni wishes to persuade Prime Minister Netanyahu to declare an official memorial day in Israel.

Harif, an Association of Jews from the Middle Eastthe 'Iraqi ministry of human rights' declares Judenrein Iraq 'a tolerant country' and lies about the causes of the great Jewish exodus, blaming Zionism.
AMMAN — Amer Musa Nasim, once one of the last seven remaining Jews in Baghdad, says he finally had to leave violence-stricken Iraq to live a peaceful life even though he loves his country.
"I have always tried to hide my identity to avoid trouble," said Nasim, 38, who arrived in Jordan earlier this year.
"But I am Iraqi and I love Iraq," he said, adding that he could not, however, keep his religion secret because it was marked on his national identity papers.
"My friends and some neighbours in Baghdad knew I was Jewish and they treated me with kindness and respect. After all, I liked them.


We are all Iraqi, and Iraqi Jews have never harmed the country," said the merchant, who sold clothes and perfume.
"I had no future. I could not get married because I could not find a bride. The last Jewish wedding in Iraq was held in 1978."
Today, Nasim dreams of a better life in Britain, where his mother and sister live. But his visa application has been rejected four times.
He proudly recalls his great uncle, Mir Basri, author and renowned economist, who was secretary general of the Iraqi foreign ministry back in the 1940s.
There were about 150,000 Iraqi Jews before the 1948 creation of Israel. But between 1948 and 1951, nearly all of the country's 2,500-year-old Jewish community fled amid a region-wide outbreak of nationalist violence.
"The issue of Jews inIraq dates back to 1948 and the organised work of Zionism to relocate them to a different place," said Kamel al-Amin, spokesman for the Iraqi ministry of human rights.
"Iraq is a tolerant country that does not oppose the presence of Jews. There are no official plans or actions against them. Iraq is undergoing difficult circumstances and situation, and that's why only a few of them remained in the country."
In the violence that erupted after the US-led invasion of 2003, Iraq's few remaining Jews went into hiding as sectarian militias marauded across the country, slaughtering Muslim rivals as well as Christians and other minorities.
Last month, a leaked US diplomatic cable released by whistleblower website Wikileaks quoted a woman who spoke with a US embassy staff member in October 2009


as saying "there are now eight remaining members of the Iraqi Jewish community in Baghdad," including herself.
"She stated that the community had numbered 20 persons in 2003, but that the number has declined as a result of old age, emigration, and sectarian violence," according to the cable.
It said the woman, a dentist, was "one of the last remaining Jews in Iraq".
Her mother, she said, had died the previous year, while her husband was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in 2005, and was most likely murdered.
She said a synagogue and Jewish cemetery in Baghdad have been shut since 2004. Another synagogue in the southern port city of Basra had been turned into a warehouse.
When asked about Iraqi Jews living abroad returning to visit or re-establish connections, the woman "was pessimistic,saying that latent anti-Semitism within Iraqi society would prevent this from happening anytime soon."
Nasim said that "in 2007, a Jewish jeweller was kidnapped in 2009, and another had to flee Iraq following that."
That departure left left only seven Jews in Baghdad until Nasim decided to pack up and leave.
"Despite all the pessimism that surrounds us, I dream of the day when all Jews return to Iraq ... which they loved and remained loyal to," he said.Read article in full

Friday, October 21, 2011

Muammar Gaddafi's policies brought about the elimination of Libya's Jewish community, as David Gerbi explains in this interview with The Jerusalem Post. But now that the dictator is dead, it is easy to forget that the Jews were the objects of violence and marginalisation well before Gaddafi


seized power - denied citizenship, voting rights and the right to run their own institutions.

David Gerbi recalled on Thursday his first and last face-to-face encounter with Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator killed earlier in the day by rebel forces in his hometown of Sirte.

In 2009, Gerbi, a Libyan-born Jew, accepted an invitation to meet Gaddafi in Rome to speak about improving relations between the regime and Libya’s Jewish Diaspora.“I can see his face in front of me now,” Gerbi related in an interview conducted via Skype from Rome. “He had the eyes of a Beduin, someone who could find water in the desert, but he could not connect with our reality.”

Gerbi was one of the few members of the Jewish Libyan community in Rome who came to themeeting. The rest had boycotted the gathering because it was provocatively held on a Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. During the meeting, Gerbi said he pressed the autocrat to restore the rights of Jews and permit the reopening of the country’s synagogues, which lay in waste.

The killing of the Libyan leader on Thursday marked the final chapter in the troubled history between Gaddafi and Libyan Jewry.

When the young colonel came to power in 1969 the Jewish community of Libya, which traced its history back to antiquity, had already been decimated by pogroms carried out by Muslims angered over the Israeli-Arab conflict. From a peak of around 30,000 during the 1930s, only a few hundred remained, but it was Gaddafi’s policies that brought about the community’s elimination. He


of Kings” would sometimes promise to consider returning their rights and property, and allowed a few individuals to visit, but nothing ever came to fruition.

By the time the revolution against his regime came late last year there was talk of progress, but it was too little, too late.

Egyptian Jews can be proud that one of their own was instrumental in successfully negotiating the release of Gilad Shalit after five years of captivity in Gaza.

His name is David Meidan (Mosseri), who has worked for Mossad for 30 years. The Arabic-speaking head of Tevel, the branch in charge of cooperation and intelligence-sharing with foreign intelligence services, Meidan was appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as his special envoy to take part in the Shalit negotiations six months ago. Israeli TV hassaid he played a major part in securing the young hostage's freedom, his contacts with Egyptian intelligence proving crucial.

Meidan was born in Egypt in 1955. At the age of two he was brought to Israel by his parents Rose and Nathan Mosseri, and later changed his name to Meidan.

Grieving relatives of Copts killed by a recent military crackdown leave Abbasiya Cathedral and pour into the streets of Cairo. (Photo: Amel Pain / EPA-Corbis)

What begins with the Jews, never ends with them. Last week's massacre of Copts in Egypt (let's call a spade a spade: 'clashes' suggest that both sides were responsible for the violence) prompted Joseph Wahed, co-founder of JIMENA, to write the following letter to the Wall St Journal. It was published on October 17.

This reminded me


when Egypt's nationality laws made it virtually impossible for Jews, and some Christians, born in Egypt to acquire Egyptian nationality thus rendering many stateless. In addition, Jews were restricted from certain government Jobs.

Nowadays, Christians are being victimized by the Muslim community in Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza, Bethlehem, Lebanon, Nigeria and elsewhere.

Sadly, just like when Jews were being ethnically cleansed, there's the same stone silence from the U.N., Human Rights Organizations, religious leaders and the world's Christian community.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Here is a must-see sequel to the Skype interview by Rabbi Abraham Cooper (from the Simon Wiesenthal Institute) of David Gerbi. Gerbi is the lone Libyan Jew who returned to his homeland, but was forced to leave after his physical security was put at risk by crowds protesting outside hisjeering crowds outside his hotel window was his book of Tehilim (Psalms): "It saved my life."

Young people who understood that Libya was now at a crossroads between liberalism and Islamism came to see Gerbi to give him their support, having understood that the Jew represents their fight for rights. "My presence will guarantee their democracy," he says, calling for the US Congress and the Jewish establishment to put pressure on the interim government to allow Jewish freedom of worship.

But he was soon brought down to earth with a thud not in Libya, but back in Rome. Here his efforts to help wounded Libyan soldiers were stymied when in hospital he encountered the same old Gaddafi-esque anti-Jewish hostility in the shape of a certain Dr Ali. Dr Ali wanted


the Jew Gerbi off the premises.

I must confess that I was once sceptical of what David Gerbi was trying to achieve. Yet one man can make a difference. In the same way that one finds pride in the released hostage Gilad Shalit's quiet Jewish nobility, so Gerbi is an inspiration. One cannot help be impressed and moved by the dignity, simple faith, humanity and bravery of this man.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The David Gerbi case is reverberating around the blogosphere. He's the Libyan-born Jew, you'll remember, who was hurriedly deported from Tripoli after threats on his life and angry demonstrations declaring " There is no place for Jews in Libya". The two Michaels (Totten and Rubin) have been pondering its significance for the future of Arab-Jewish relations on Contentions,BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS

Enron Freight Markets
Enron Freight Markets (EFM) launched its over-the-road trucking business this
week.  In addition, EFM completed 199 intermodal transactions in the first
week of April.

ENA West Power
ENA West Power recently closed the sale of two power projects.  The 750MW
Pastoria Energy Facility in Kern County, California was sold to Calpine and
the 240MW Fountain Valley Power project in Colorado was sold to Black Hills
Energy Capital.  Given the power shortage in the West, ENA is developing
additional power generation in Nevada, California and Washington.

Enron Industrial Markets
The newsprint group of EIM is working to revolutionize the newsprint market
and bring financial rigor and market efficiencies to a business that has
remained relatively unchanged for more than a century. The global newsprint
market is a


23 billion dollar a year business with the North American market
comprising one third.  The group's originators, mid-marketers, and financial
and physical traders offer our customers numerous financial and physical
products not previously available in the market.

EIM has made a substantial commitment to this business with the purchase of
Garden State Paper company last year and the recent purchase of Daishowa
Paper in Quebec City. The number of transactions has grown exponentially with
the physical trading alone reaching a nominal trading volume of more than
$10,000,000 per month in little more than four months since opening.  In
addition to physical spot transactions, the desk offers our counterparties
log-term fixed priced transactions, indexed based pricing, forward contracts,
swaps, and derivative products.

Forest Products
Forestweb Inc., an Internet-based generator,aggregator and integrator of
knowledge and information for the forest products industry, announced a new
window to industry financial and risk management tools available from
Clickpaper.com. Clickpaper allows the industry direct access to transactable
prices for both physical and financial products, in an electronic format.

Paperloop.com, one of the leading online resources for the forest products
industry, announced the addition of Clickpaper.com in their emarketplace,
which showcases various e-commerce companies and highlights their services.
Paperloop provides Clickpaper.com exposure to its 250,000+ monthly users in
the pulp, paper and converting industries.

IN THE NEWS

Ken Lay was the cover story for the April 2001 issue of Continental Magazine.
 He had positive things to say about his employees.

&Sitting in his 50th floor mahogany-paneled office overlooking his
much-beloved downtown Houston, Lay, with


Bag is Thursday, April 19
at 11:30 AM.  Tim Battaglia VP/EIM will be discussing Steel Origination.

Congratulations to Peter del Vecchio, EIM senior counsel, and his wife, Nair.
They are the proud parents of Dante Valentin del Vecchio, born April 3,
weighing 4 pounds, 8 ounces.

NEWS FROM THE GLOBAL FLASH

Enron Poland obtains Gas Trading License
On 22nd March 2001 Enron Poland received a 10-year Gas Trading License, valid
for both domestic gas trading within Poland as well as for gas exports.  The
license is a key component to our entering the gas trading market in Poland
and, coupled with the Power Trading License we obtained in 1999, will give
Enron Poland a strong position in the developing wholesale energy market.  In
the next two to three weeks,we expect to receive a cross-border trading
license covering gas imports that are further regulated under the Polish
Energy Law Ordinance on Gas Import Diversification.

Enron Wind announces first UK off-shore wind farm
On 5th April 2001, Enron Wind announced that it had been granted the right to
initiate the planning process for its first UK offshore wind farm, located at
Gunfleet Sands, 7km from Clacton-upon-Sea in Essex.  Construction is expected
to start towards the end of 2002, with the wind farm of 30 turbines being
operational by Q4 2003.  Enron Wind is also actively involved in a number of
on-shore projects in the UK, including the development of wind farms in Wales
and Northern Ireland.

LEGAL STUFF
The information contained in this newsletter is confidential and proprietary
to Enron


from low and middle-income countries. Over two-thirds (60%) of all these maternal deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, the likelihood of a 15-year-old girl in sub-Saharan Africa dying due to complications related to childbirth is as high as 1:37, when compared to 1:3400 in developed countries. On the other hand, it was projected that in sub-Saharan Africa, 1:12 children die before reaching the age of five, as compared to 1:147 seen in the developed countries.^[@CIT0003]^

The South Africa's 2010--2013 'National Committee on Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths'^[@CIT0004]^ reports recognised non-pregnancy related infections, obstetric haemorrhage and complications of hypertension in pregnancy as the three conditions that contribute mainly to the preventable maternal deaths. The above-named conditions contribute to 66.7% and 56.8% of the possible and probable avoidable maternal deaths inof the cause shown in the caption hereof."
The testimony of appellant reflects that she and the deceased had been living together since September, 1971. According to appellant, December 25, 1972, was spent visiting two sisters and going to bars. Appellant and the deceased had argued throughout the day about appellant working as a cocktail waitress. Upon returning to their residence on Leilia Street in Houston that night, and after appellant dressed for bed "he [deceased] got up and started fighting me again, and then he knocked me down on the coffee table and broke up everything in the living room." Appellant then went to the bedroom and got into bed. Deceased was "laying on the bed with his face turned to the wall." Deceased "propped up on his


in a state of fear and terror due to the fact that she had been knocked over a coffee table and struck by the deceased," and failed to mention the incident in bed immediately preceding the shooting.
The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.
Opinion approved by the Court.
DOUGLAS, Judge (dissenting).
After the draft of the original opinion, it was called to the attention of the voting majority that the appellant's brief was not timely filed within thirty (30) days after approval of the record as required by Article 40.09, Section 9, Vernon's Ann. C.C.P. The record was approved by the trial court December 19, 1973, and notice of approval of the record was given appellant's retained counsel. The appellate brief was filed January 23, 1974. According to our previousnot raise the issue of murder without malice. She testified that she was living with the deceased. She and the deceased had an argument at the Brewster Street Lounge about her working on Christmas Day. She further related that she calmed him down and later they went home. He fixed and brought her food upstairs. He ate *849 and then started fighting her again and knocked her down on the coffee table and broke up everything in the living room. Later she testified, "Me thinking everything was all right, I went into the bedroom."
"Q. What did he do?
"A. He went into the bedroom.
"* * *
"Q. Now, after Charles went into the bedroom then what did you do, what did you do some minutes later?
"A. I got in bed.
"*


* *
"Q. And where was Charles?
"A. Laying on the bed with his face turned to the wall."
She further testified that after she got in bed he told her, "He was tired of my ____." Charles was in the bed with his face to the wall and that he then pushed up on his elbow facing her "a little bit" with a pistol in his hand. When she saw the gun she got scared and, "I don't know why the gun slipped, but when the gun slipped I just picked it up and started shooting" and pulled the trigger two times, and
"Q. You heard the man here when he testified the gun was up against him?
"A. Well, we were both in bed.
"Q. Up against Charles' tee shirt, do youhe thought bothered him earlier. One was the victim of the shooting. He stated that he heard McGee had jumped on his cousin and they argued. The deceased then told McGee that he was going to kick his rear. McGee testified that he fired because he was afraid that the two were going to attack him and that he did not know what he was doing and was afraid the deceased was fixing to shoot him.
This Court held that no charge on murder without malice was required. In that case and in the instant case the Court covered the issues raised by the evidence self-defense. The McGee case was a stronger case for such a charge than this case. In the present case the appellant, after the fight,


Evergreen is a symbol of life and is taken from the old midwinter festival which encourages the return of sun which is another reason why we often use holly, mistletoe and ivy to decorate our houses. In the past, rosemary, bay and laurel were also used . copyright of projectbritain.com

Holly

Mistletoe

Ivy

Ancient people were fascinated by the way evergreens stayed green through all the bleak days of winter. It proved to them that these trees were still alive and reminded them that spring would come again.

Holly

The Holly, from ancient times, was used by people in Britain to protect their homes from evil spirits. Witches and warlocks, are said to be deterred from entering by the holly's prickly leaves and also by its reputation for holiness (the word "holly" comes fromVictoria.

Up until the 19th century, people would keep their decorations of holly, ivy, box, yew, laurel and mistletoe up until 2nd February, Candlemas Day, the end of the Christmas season, 40 days after the birth of Jesus.

Robert Herrick in his poem 'Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve' writes,

DOWN with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the mistletoe ;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box (for show).


the reduction in Maui's sugarcane production. Reducing groundwater pollution could result in future increases in reef health and decreases in the occurrence of nuisance algal blooms for impacted areas.

"The long-term goal of this research group is to bridge the disciplines of hydrology, geochemistry and marine biology to help answer pressing questions regarding the source and impact of nutrient pollution in Hawaiian coastal waters," said Craig Glenn, Henrietta Dulaiova and Celia Smith, the collaborating principal investigators and co-authors of the Hawai'i Sea Grant project.any other locals. People would also receive prizes based on their placement at the end of the tournament. First would gain a certain amount of dp and entry into the PDA Regionals, the second part of this plan, which I will explain later. Second would also receive dp and maybe entry into the PDA Regionals. Third would receive a certain number of dp but no entry into the regionals. At the end of the month, there will be another tournament known as PDA Regionals held for everybody who qualified. The prizes for the winners of PDA Regionals will be much larger.

I also suggested a dorm leader tournament to decide the dorm leaders of each dorm, but that thread has since been deleted. I or not wish to write


A familiar face is joining the cast of Bravo's upcoming series Dirty John. Keiko Agena, known for playing Lane Kim, Rory Gilmore's best friend on Gilmore Girls, will join Connie Britton, Eric Bana, and many more in the scripted anthology series that is set to premiere in late November. Keiko will play Debra's co-worker Nancy.

Set in Orange County, California and based on the popular LA Times articles and podcast series by Christopher Goffard, this show will prove to be a little different than what we saw in Stars Hollow. As Keiko explains in the clip above: "It's the kind of story that draws you in and is entertaining at the same time."

The series will follow the true story of Debra Newell (Britton), a mother and interior designer whoPeter Knox

Peter Knox has been a volunteer for the British Association of Shooting and Conservation for over 20 years. During this time he has also been a coach, volunteering his services to introduce and encourage many people to the sport.

Whether coaching at events to the general public, or through the Young Shots events which cater for the under 21s, or at Ladies Days, Peter is always spreading the message about the sportsmanship involved in shooting and conservation.

Peter remains passionate about shooting and conversation and he represents the heartbeat of the sport.


blow out or forget the candles and decorate the cake with an edible photo made of various frosting components or edible rice paper on the cake or cookie.There's no need to have kids sputtering their childhood ailments on a cake served to guests.

Birthday celebrations often follow a formula, including off-key singing, making a birthday wish while blowing out candles, and the ceremonial cutting of the birthday cake. New research suggests that this ritual not only makes the experience more memorable, but might also improve the taste of the cake.

Psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota wondered about the power of rituals after noticing the funny routines that people -- including Vohs herself -- often perform before eating and drinking:

"Whenever IF. and bake another 10 minutes or longer until lightly browned on top. Let cook. Remove with a spatula and store airtight because these cookies break easily into crumbs. This makes about 36 cookies.

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Anne Hart, author of 91 paperback books, nutrition anthropology journalist, began writing full time as an independent journalist, novelist, and nonfiction book author starting on June 17, 1959. She holds a graduate degree specializing in professional writing (M.A. in English/writing). Her emphasis is on nutrition and health journalism, science writing, and culture in the media. Hart has written more than 5,000 Examiner.com articles since 2009.


of cells in the digestive system. It is often called colorectal cancer because it can affect both the colon and the rectum. Colon cancer begins in the layers of tissue found in one of the four sections of the colon and develops slowly over time. It is usually first discovered as a polyp, or a small growth of tissue in the colon. According to American Cancer Society statistics, colon cancer is the third most common type of cancer among men and women. This type of cancer was estimated to affect 105,000 people by the end of 2003.
Breast cancer is a tumor that is originally found in the cells of the breast. It is most common in women, but can also be found in men as well. It istheir adoption of Canvas:

Skylight's LT team and CTLT are partnering to offer hands-on workshops that are specifically tailored to the needs of Science faculty. All Science-specific workshops will take place in the Earth Sciences Building (ESB) (rooms listed below). Registration for the following workshops in September is now open:

We have added workshops in October, November, and December. If you would like to attend any of the following workshops, please register here.

Tue October 3 (10:00am-11:30am) – ESB 5106

Thu October 5 (10:00am-11:30am) – ESB 5106

Tue October 10 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed October 11 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue October 17 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed October 18 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5108

Tue October 24 (2:00pm-3:30pm) – ESB 5104

Wed October 25 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue October 31 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed November 1 (11:00am-12:30pm)


– ESB 5106

Tue November 7 (9:30am-11:00am) – ESB 5106

Wed November 8 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue November 14 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed November 15 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5108

Tue November 21 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed November 22 (2:00pm-3:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue November 28 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed November 29 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue December 5 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed December 6 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Tue December 12 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

Wed December 13 (11:00am-12:30pm) – ESB 5106

There are additional CTLT workshops for general audiences that may be of interest to Science faculty. Visit CTLT's Canvas workshops site to learn more about and register for these workshops.

We will keep you informed as other additional workshops and professional development materials are made available. We will be emailing you information about these opportunitiesDiabetes mellitus in Tohon O'odham pregnancies.
To determine the prevalence of diabetes in Tohono O'odham pregnancies, and to assess the efficacy of early prenatal diabetes screening in populations with high rates of diabetes. All Tohono O'odham women receiving prenatal care at the Sells Service Unit who delivered a viable baby in the 5-yr study period were reviewed. Diabetes was confirmed in 97 of 1854 (5.2%) Tohono O'odham pregnancies delivered during the study period. NIDDM antedated pregnancy in 38 (39%) of the diabetic pregnancies. Diabetes was diagnosed for the first time in 59 (61%) of these diabetic pregnancies. The diagnosis was made at or before the 20th gestational wk in 25 of 59 (42%) gestational diabetic women. These 25 women represented 61% of 41 gestational diabetic women who received prenatal


Play video content Exclusive Details TMZ.com

Dave Chappelle proved even comedic geniuses have off nights ... because hundreds of angry fans are demanding refunds after a Detroit performance many are calling a drunken catastrophe.

According to multiple people in the crowd during Thursday night's 9:30 show at the Fillmore ... a seemingly wasted Chappelle took the stage an hour late (mostly due to the crowd still being seated), and told very few jokes. Instead, he sat quietly smoking, rambling, and slurring his speech.

In this video you can hear someone in the crowd yell, "Let's hear some of the act!" Dave responds, "Well sir, it's a little late for that. Right now I've gotta get off the stage because it's 2:00 in the morning."

The crowd quickly reminds him it was onlyband in its untutored infancy...Across its four terse, hilarious songs - full of rants against British hair bands [on 'Shot Down Again'], analyses of Jerry Falwell's shortcomings as a marriage counselor, and an irreverent homage to Hank Williams - the band was able to erect a sound that approximated nothing so much as Joe Strummer hurling a wrecking ball through the Grand Ole Opry. This was no joke."

 Fervor with EMI
EMI signed the Scorchers in 1983, and producer/engineer Terry Manning was brought on board. New tracks were recorded, and a second EP was released with the title Fervor. By now, the Scorchers were fairly popular as a live act, and rock critics from noted publications began to take notice. Robert Christgau praised Fervor in his "Consumer Guide" column,


moved to Los Angeles to work in the video business, Johnson moved to Atlanta to work in the auto and motorcycle repair business, Baggs remained in Nashville, working on Christian music projects, and Fox joined The Fleshtones.

Compact disc retrospective
A few years later, EMI Records hired Jimmy Guterman to compile a compact disc retrospective of the Scorchers' music. A single compact disc containing 22 tracks, Are You Ready for the Country?: The Essential Jason and the Scorchers, Volume 1 was issued in the fall of 1992, including all of Fervor, Lost and Found, and four rarities. (Reportedly, plans for a second volume never materialized.) Jon Brant played on two songs recorded live in 1988 on this compilation. It would fall out-of-print years later, replaced by a shorter compilation thatChild porn teacher is allowed back in the classroom: Alarm as RE master escapes ban

Geoffrey Bettley viewed six child abuse images on internet site in 2009

Handed caution after police found 189 indecent images on his computer

He viewed some of the pictures for 'two to three years on and off'

36-year-old was placed on the sex offenders' register for two years

Disciplinary panel says images 'not at the most serious end of the scale'

Tory MP: 'I suspect most parents would feel very uneasy about this man being able to continue teaching'

'Very worrying case': RE teacher Geoffrey Bettley (pictured) has been allowed to carry on working in schools despite being cautioned for possessing indecent images of children

A teacher who downloaded child porn has been allowed to resume his career by the Department


for Education.

Geoffrey Bettley, 36, was sacked, given a police caution and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register after admitting viewing sickening images over several years.

But a professional conduct panel said the married RE teacher could return to the classroom because of his ‘excellent teaching’.

A senior official, acting on behalf of Education Secretary Michael Gove, rubber-stamped the decision, saying there was a ‘need to be proportionate and to act in the public interest’.

Last night the case sparked a furious reaction from MPs, schools campaigners and a children’s charity. Research has shown that one in six men who view child porn go on to abuse children. Fears about the effects of child porn have been heightened after child killers Mark Bridger and Stuart Hazell were found to have beenheavy users of it in the run up to the murders of April Jones, five, and Tia Sharp, 12.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller has summoned internet giants, including Google, to a summit in an attempt to find ways to reduce the amount of harmful material available online.

The Bettley case is similar to a scandal that rocked Labour in 2006 and damaged then Education Secretary Ruth Kelly’s reputation. At the time, Norfolk-based PE teacher Paul Reeve was told he could continue working after receiving a caution for viewing child porn.

Bettley was a teacher at St Mary’s Catholic High School in Menston, West Yorkshire, for ten years until he was sacked in December 2011.

Disgraced: Bettley, 36, was dismissed from his ten-year career at St Mary's Catholic School (above), in Menston, West


Yorkshire, after he accepted a police caution

Details of his web habits were revealed in a report by the National College for Teaching and Leadership after its professional conduct panel considered his case.

He initially visited an internet site in 2009 and viewed ‘six child abuse images’.

By the time police seized his computer in December last year he had seen 143 images – assessed to be on the lowest ‘level one’ scale for seriousness.

Another 46 more serious ‘level three’ images, including scenes of child abuse, were on the computer but had not been viewed.

The panel said the photographs were ‘not at the most serious end of the scale but, nevertheless, embarking on the process of downloading such images may lead to the viewing of more serious images’.

All-clear: Education Secretary MichaelLegend of the Giant Claw

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Most Indians today are well aware of the two famous ancient universities of India which also are one of the oldest universities in the world – Takshashila University (Taxila) and Nalanda. But are these the only knowledge centers that existed in ancient India? Education has always been given great prominence in Indian society since the times of the vedic civilization, with gurukul and ashrams being the centers of learning. And with evolving times, a large number of centers of learning were established across ancient India of which Takshashila and Nalanda are the most famous ones known today. Below is a list of major ancient universities that flourished across ancient India.

Takshashila University

Taxila as it is called today, Takshashila University established around 2700 years ago was home to over 10500students where the students from all across the world used to come to attain specialization in over 64 different fields of study like vedas, grammar, philosophy, ayurveda, agriculture, surgery, politics, archery, warfare, astronomy, commerce, futurology, music, dance, etc. Famous graduates of this University include the ones like Chanakya, Panini, Charaka, Vishnu Sharma, Jivaka etc. This is the world’s oldest university. Read more about Takshashila University of Ancient India.

Nalanda University

Nalanda University was established by Shakraditya of Gupta dynasty in modern Bihar during early 5th century and flourished for 600 years till 12th century. Nalanda was the world’s first university to have residential quarters for both students and teachers. It also had large public lecture halls. Students from countries like Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey came to


study in this university.

The library of this university was the largest library of the ancient world and had thousands of volumes of manuscripts on various subjects like grammar, logic, literature, astrology, astronomy, and medicine. The library complex was called Dharmaganja, and had three large buildings: the Ratnasagara, the Ratnadadhi, and the Ratnaranjaka. Ratnadadhi was nine stories tall and stored the most sacred manuscripts including the Prajnaparamita Sutra and the Samajguhya.

In 2010, the parliament of India passed a bill approving the plans to restore the ancient Nalanda University as a modern Nalanda International University dedicated for post-graduate research. Many east asian countries including China, Singapore and Japan have come forward to fund the construction of this revived Nalanda University.

Vikramashila University

Vikramashila University was established by Dharmapala of Pala dynasty duringlate 8th century and flourished for 400 years till 12th century. It was located in the Bhagalpur district of modern day Bihar. It gave direct competition to Nalanda University with over 100 teachers and over 1000 students listed in this University. This university was well known for its specialized training on the subject of Tantra (Tantrism). One of the most popular graduates from this University was Ati?a Dipankara, a founder of the Sharma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism who also revived the Buddhism in Tibet.

Valabhi University

Valabhi University was established in Saurashtra of modern Gujarat at around 6th century and it flourished for 600 years till 12th century. Chinese traveler Itsing who visited this university during the 7th century describes it as a great center of learning. Gunamati and Sthiramati,


the two famous Buddhist scholars are said to have graduated from this University. This University was popular for its training in secular subjects and students from all over the country came to study in this University. Because of its high quality of education, graduates of this University were given higher executive posts.

Pushpagiri University

Pushpagiri University was established in ancient Kalinga kingdom (modern day Odisha) and was spread across Cuttack and Jajpur districts. It was established in 3rd century and flourished for the next 800 years till 11th century. The university campus was spread across three adjoining hills – Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri. This was one of the most prominent centers of higher education in ancient India along with the universities of Takshashila, Nalanda and Vikramashila. The Chinese traveler Xuanzang(Huien Tsang) visited this university in 639 CE. Lalitgiri is said to have been commissioned by early 2nd century BCE itself and is the oldest Buddhist establishments in the world. Recently a few images of Emperor Ashoka have been discovered here, and it has been suggested that the Pushpagiri University was established by Emperor Ashoka himself.

Odantapuri University

Odantapuri University was established by Dharmapala of Pala dynasty during late 8th century in Magadha (which is in modern day Bihar) and flourished for 400 years till 12th century. The famous Acharya Sri Ganga who was a professor at the Vikramashila University was a graduate of this Odantapuri University. According to the ancient Tibetan records there were about 12,000 students studying at this University. Ancient Tibetan texts mention this as one among


the five great Universities of its time, the other four being Vikramashila, Nalanda, Somapura and Jagaddala Universities – all located in ancient India.

Somapura University

Somapura Mahavihara was established by Dharmapala of Pala dynasty during late 8th century in Bengal and flourished for 400 years till 12th century. The University spread over 27 acres of land of which the main complex was 21 acres was one of the largest of its kind. It was a major center of learning for Bauddha Dharma (Buddhism), Jina Dharma (Jainism) and Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Even today one can find ornamental terracotta on its outer walls depicting the influence of these three traditions.

Other Ancient Universities

The above mentioned list is not a complete list of ancient Indian universities either. Dharmapala of Pala dynasty alone is saidto have established 50 mega learning centers across his kingdom, and they have been as huge and as popular as the ones mentioned above. For instance, the Munshiganj Vihara discovered as recently as Marh 23, 2013 in Bengal is said to have been established in 9th century and was home to 8000 students who came from faraway places like China, Tibet, Nepal and Thailand.

Destruction of Ancient Indian Universities

As you can see, many of the universities mentioned above came to an end around 12th century. The universities like Nalanda, Vikramashila etc were destroyed around this period during the Muslim invasion of India by the fanatic Bakhtiyar Khilji from Turkey in 1193 CE. The great library of Nalanda University was destroyed, ransacked and burnt by the soldiers of Khilji’s army


LOS ANGELES, June 2 (JTA) — “Schindler’s List” etched a new aspect of the Holocaust into the public mind — now it has helped Steven Spielberg graduate from college. The celebrated filmmaker, who holds five honorary doctorates — as well as three Oscars and a string of box office records — received a bachelor´s degree in the arts last Friday from California State University at Long Beach. Some 34 years after dropping out of the university’s film school, Spielberg, 55, completed the requirements for the degree by writing term papers and completing several general education courses, all through independent study. The school waived the requirement that seniors submit a polished 12-minute film, ruling that “Schindler’s List” would do. Spielberg, garbed in cap and gown, sat among his fellow500 graduates. The Cal State administration had earlier asked them not to take advantage of the situation by pressing their film scripts on him. When the name Steven Allen Spielberg was called, the filmmaker rose, as did the audience of some 6,000, while the band belted out a 15-second rendition from the theme music for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Spielberg skipped any remarks but raised his hands, holding up two fingers in a “V” for victory. Three days earlier, Spielberg, also attired in cap and gown, received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at Yale University. Yale President Richard Levin conferred the degree on Spielberg, lauding the “artistry and imagination” of his movies, as well as his contributions in preserving the memory of the Holocaust. For