A Guest Opinion

Grave-Diggers for the Assyrian Nation

Prof. Sergei Osipov, MD, PhD
Moscow

In his 1994 book titled ‘Diplomacy’, the former US Secretary of State Henry Alfred Kissinger writes that collaboration with victorious invaders tends to confuse the minds of the conquered people and thereby saps the morale in them. The following deals with a vivid example of this.

The war in Iraq has turned the spotlight on many things that we habitually ignored. I believe the most horrible of them are tragic and outright suicidal schisms between factions of Iraq’s Assyrians. These schisms, most often tribal and confessional, are maintained and fanned by the ambition and self-interest of a batch of quasi-patriots in the Assyrian community. And it is nothing short of amazing how successfully the leadership of the Iraqi Kurds uses this ambition and self-interest to political gain. At that, its propaganda efforts to assert Kurdish greatness sometimes take it too far and verge on farce.

One instance of this is the book by Salavat Gallyamov “The Ancient Aryans and Eternal Kurdistan” (Moscow, Veche Publishers, 2007, 560 pp.). Anyone with at least a superficial knowledge of the Mesopotamian and Southwest Asian history finds reading it a challenge to common sense. Only a professional psychiatrist can take serious interest in it. As for me, I’m dumbfounded by the fact that this rubbish is off the press with the blessing and help of the top leaders of the Iraqi Kurds. On its title sheet, the author extends thanks to “President of the Federal (Iraqi) Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani and Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani”. The foreword is by the “plenipotentiary envoy of the Regional Government of Kurdistan to Russia” Mr. Hoshavi Babakr. This man uses the opportunity for demonstrating what he apparently wants to pass for vast knowledge of history.  One extract from his book:

“In 1916, Russia empowered the commander of its Caucasus Front Grand Duke Nicholas to encourage the Kurdish General Simko to establish a separate Kurdish homeland named Kurdistan”.

Or this:

“Unlike the Sumerians, the Kurds were fully autochthonous to Mesopotamia and Zagros and they gave rise to civilization in these areas”.

At his best, Mr. Babakr plays music to the ears of his backers in Israel:

“The Jews are looking to Kurdistan to find the ten tribes of Israel that were lost to the Exile. Similarly, the Kurds have been looking to Russia to find the descendants of the Medes who sometime in the 1st millennium BC migrated north from their original home country in the Zagros Mountains and close to the upper reaches of the River Tigris.”

Tributes to you for your diligence, Mr. Babakr. Nothing to wonder at. Self-praise is always in direct proportion to the propensity to it.

As for the rest of the book, suffice it to run through the titles of the chapters in it. This exercise immediately leads the reader to conclude that he is dealing with a vicious travesty rather than bona fide historical research. The texts under the titles are even worse. For instance, the chapter titled “The Pre-History of Sumer” closely follows Genesis – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Kurd. The author goes on to inform us that “the Roman rulers Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus were both of the Dard line which traced its ancestry to the Kurdish tribe of Zarzi in Zagros.” In the chapter titled “The Kurds as Initiators of European Art”, the author is at pains to convince us that ‘drama’, ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’ are words of Kurdish origin. His argumentation for this is based on simple similarity in pronunciation. ‘Comedy’, for example, is derived by him from the Kurdish words ‘gome’, which means ‘sheepshed’, and ‘medha’, which means ‘wine’. At the same time, in an epigraph to the chapter, the author quotes Theodor Noldeke as writing that “Kurd has always been synonymous with all things uncultured”. Now, the titles of two of the other chapters: “The Kurds as the Founders of the Legal System of the Indo-Germanic Nations”, “The Kurds and the Jews”. The latter chapter contains a subchapter titled “The Jews as the Next of Kin of the Kurds”.  I rest my case.

These texts amount to a political insinuation aimed at canceling the entire history of the Assyrian Empire and the Assyrian people. This said, questions arise about the reasoning of the Assyrian politicians and clergymen who would have their nation incorporated in Kurdistan as a subjugated autonomy. Very probably, politicians like Mr. Sargis Aghajan cum henchmen, most hierarchs of the Assyrian Churches and the managers of media outlets such as “Ishtar TV” and “Bet Nahrain” (Assyria-Set) have put up with the notion that Mesopotamia rightfully belongs to the Kurds and the Assyrians are minor trencherfolk of them. Accordingly, the Kurds are not invaders in Assyria. Rather, ancient Assyrian kings brazenly moved forces to invade Kurdish-owned Mesopotamia.

Given this, all Assyrians still in their senses should expediently understand that the Assyrian struggle in Iraq is not ‘the Assyrians vs the Kurds’, ‘the Assyrians vs the Arabs’ or ‘the Assyrians vs the Turks’. It is actually internal and is best described as ‘the Assyrian nation-builders vs the Grave-diggers for the Assyrian nation’. It’s time we all understood that anyone who denies the Assyrians their ancestral right to their historical homeland of the Nineveh Plain or lays claim to this Assyrian land  is an invader. Collaboration with invaders amounts to high treason and collaborators are grave-diggers for their nation. Throughout history, people who rejected collaboration with invading powers had to flee, even in the face of the hardship this brought on them. Handfuls that stayed put consisted of individuals capable of putting up resistance and retaining their ethnic identity, despite pressure from the invaders.

These days, the Assyrians have to save their nation from slave-like humiliation. The relentless march of the nation’s grave-diggers towards subjugation at the hands of the Kurds  must be immediately stopped. The choice before the Assyrians is as stark as it is simple: to push these grave-diggers into their prepared pits or forever expire as a nation in charge of its ancestral homeland.

Prof. Osipov, despite his incredibly busy schedule of traveling around the world as Russia's renown health educator and policy-maker, finds time to involve himself in the issues dealing with his people.  Prof. Osipov's voice is familiar to Assyrian-Russians who enjoyed his weekly radio program, Qala Atouraya, broadcast from Moscow.  Zinda Magazine highly recommends reading the old issues of "Melta", a publication compiled and edited by Prof. Osipov.   Prof. Osipov's past essays in Zinda can be found using the Search and Archives links from the home page.

Desk of Zinda Editor:   In follow-up to the hugely popular article presented by a bright, young Assyrian, Mr. Ramsin Canon, in the previous issue of Zinda Magazine, Zinda presents another attention-grabbing article by another Assyrian youth with profound insight into enhacing the current condition of the Assyrians around the world.  Since the publication of Mr. Cannon's perceptive article, Toward A New Organizing Model, Mr. Canon has been contacted by several Assyrian organizations in the U.S. for his advice and consultation.  Zinda Magazine believes that unless our resourceful youth are not directly engaged in the social, economic, and political affairs of the Assyrian nation, no solemn progress can be expected in these grim and critical days of ours.  Zinda encourages other Assyrian youth to present their thoughts in the coming issues of this publication. 

The Assyrian Economy

Ninus Kanna
Australia

So what makes an economy? Does it need to involve a Sovereign (government) ?

At its very core, an economy is simply a system whereby entities (whether individuals, households businesses, or even states) are producing, exchanging and consuming.  Then could there be an Assyrian economy? The answer is a definitive, YES!

Although there is no explicit Assyrian sovereign state or legitimate representation for every Assyrian around the world, there is an Assyrian community, despite being scattered around the world, and this Assyrian community is being driven closer daily thanks primarily to new communication technology.

Out of curiosity, I sought to find the size and extent of the Assyrian economy, hopefully recommending ways in which the Assyrian economy can strengthen and benefit the community as a whole.

Stocks

An economy consists of stocks and flows.  Stocks, accumulation of wealth and flows, are the transfers of wealth. Wealth includes goods, services, basically anything of value. Despite Assyrians living in many different countries, the Assyrian economy is substantial. Although most nations do not have detailed financial data on Assyrians, we can make a fair assumption that the income distribution amongst Assyrians in each country is representative of the income dispersion of the country itself. For instance, the average income for Assyrians in the United States is equal to the average income for all Americans, with the same proportion of poor and rich people in the Assyrian community in the U.S. as with all of the U.S.   This assumption is the key to my analysis.  I must admit if this is not the case in reality then my analysis will not have much validity at all.

Having taken the estimated world Assyrian population split into each country and multiplying those numbers with the US dollar GDP per capita, we arrive at the information presented in the opposite table.

Not surprising; just less than 45% of the Assyrian economy is located in the US, and still about 11% remains in Iraq (though at this time most would have left Iraq). If you look at the size of the Assyrian economy compared with other nations, we would be ranked 67 th, in between Ecuador and Sudan, according to the 2006 International Monetary Fund tables.

If you are to take my assumption that Assyrians in their respective countries have identical income distribution characteristics to that of their countries, then this is an interesting finding.

Consequently, we have an economy spread all over the world, roughly the same size as Ecuador. It would be wrong to think the challenges and solutions facing Ecuador or Sudan are the same as Assyrians.  The Assyrian economy has distinct benefits; the biggest one is that we have people on the ground in the wealthiest nations in the world, which drives Assyrian GDP upward. Also, continued refugee flows into the west will vastly improve Assyrian per capita GDP, hence increasing the size of the Assyrian economy.

Flows

So how can we use our collective asset, the Assyrian economy, to good use? Well this is where flows come in:

Just like any economy, the Assyrian economy has injections (income and profits that Assyrians and their businesses earn) and leakages (goods and services that Assyrians and their businesses consume).

To further expand the Assyrian economy, the answer quite simply is to maximise the injections and minimise the leakages within the Assyrian economy.

That is, for Assyrians in the countries they reside in to maximise their earnings and profits from non-Assyrian sources, and at the same time minimise their expenditure from non-Assyrian sources. Besides increasing Assyrian populations in high per-capita GDP nations, Assyrians living in the west can:

1. improve their skills base and education
2. encourage Assyrian enterprise
3. prefer to deal with Assyrian business

This is the same model used by other Diaspora around the world, most notably the Jewish and Armenian populations, to increase communal wealth and direct it at benefiting their motherland. We have the capacity to do the same. By increasing Assyrian GDP, we will eventually be in a better capacity to achieve our communal vision.

With a stronger Assyrian economy, we can then gradually funnel our increased wealth into projects and donations to establish a presence in the motherland. At the moment, if every Assyrian individual and business donated 1% of their income to Assyrian charities or projects, so for an average Assyrian-American earning $43,000 a year donating $430 annually to an Assyrian cause, this would represent a flow of US$ 392.2 million per annum which would benefit our status and (hopefully) inch us closer to nationhood.

Sealing the patches (the economic khutama…hopefully)

I can already hear readers wonder…”You can't expect everyone to donate!”, “Where will our donations go if this guy thinks we don’t need a government to run it!”

The whole point of this article and the recommendations are to realize our resources and muster them to form a territory for our people. This does not need a government, but it needs efficient organization. Natural market forces can provide efficient organization, how this can happen I will discuss below.

In relation to economic management, by way of default, we have “outsourced” if you like, the Assyrian economy’s macroeconomic management to Central Banks around the world, where Assyrian GDP lies! If you like, the Assyrian economy has a “free ride”, being managed partially by so many Central Bankers, although at a price – Assyrians, just like any other citizen of a country, do pay the local Government taxation; this is the leakage we legally cannot and should not avoid. To this extent, the role of an Assyrian Government is not needed in managing the economy unless we were to have our own sovereign territory in which the Government has mandate to tax and issue currency. The core point of my proposed 1% donation is to provide it to an organization of your choice – as long as it is Assyrian and as long as you know the donation you make will not become a leakage away from the Assyrian economy.  The second point is of the most significant importance, as this will allow market forces to most efficiently allocate our donations by introducing accountability to donation recipients – in other words, if you suspect that by giving your donation to the X organization will not benefit Assyrians, then you will simply not donate your money there. The reduction in donations to the X organization will force them to become accountable to donors or they will dry up. Information (or misinformation for that matter) then becomes pivotal, as it always is in economics. Increased accountability will attract more Assyrian donors (and non-Assyrian donors, which is the ultimate injection), as the donor feels their contribution is more valuable.

So this is the key that for now doesn’t require us a single Assyrian economic ‘controller’ or ‘manager’ – accountability.

Accountability in Assyrian institutions and charitable organizations also needs to improve in order to increase donations as well as more effectively reach community aims. But in my final comments, accountability isn’t implemented by its institutions; it is implemented by those who donate to it - you and I.

Our discretion forces Assyrian institutions to be held accountable to us.

Ninus Kanna, 23, lives in Sydney.  He received a bachelors degree in Economics from Macquarie University in 2005.

Syrian Catholic Priests Released On Sunday

Courtesy of the Christian Post
17 October 2007
By Ethan Cole

(ZNDA: Mosul)  Father Pius Affas, 60+, and Father Mazen Ishoa, 30+, were abducted at 5 PM on 13 October in the Hay Al-Thawra neighborhood west of the city of Mosul.  Both priests were released this past Sunday, 21 October.

Father Affas has been a priest for over 40 years and is the rector of Mosul's Biblical Center.  Father Ishoa was ordained last month.

The kidnappers of these two Syrian Catholic priests were said to have reached an agreement to release the priests, but backed out and demanded more ransom money.  Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa was involved in negotiations to free the two priests.

Pope Benedict XVI personally appealed for the priests’ release when the ransom was said to be $1 million.

“I appeal to the kidnappers to release these two priests quickly and I underline once again that violence cannot bring relief to this tense situation,” he said.

The Rev. Canon Andrew White, vicar of one of the largest churches in Iraq, said 36 of his own congregants were kidnapped in July alone when he testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on the situation in Iraq.

Before the 2003 U.S.-lead offensive, an estimated 1.2 million Christians lived in Iraq. Now only about 600,000 remain. According to church leaders, an estimated 30 percent of the country's Christian population lives in the north, with the largest Christian communities located in Mosul, Arbil, Dohuk, and Kirkuk.

USCIRF, a bipartisan government task force responsible for monitoring religious freedom in the world, has urged the U.S. government to address the serious threats to Iraq’s religious minorities and has specifically mentioned the Chaldo-Assyrian Christians as one of the communities facing intense persecution and possible “extinction” in Iraq.

Facing New Terror as Turkey Targets Kurdish Rebels

With the help of local authorities, Mr Toma, a former manager of an insurance company, had spent the last year building a new house, and life, in Anishky, a village nestling at the foot of the Matin mountains in the bucolic Sabna valley, 13 miles from the Turkish border.

Mr Toma, a deacon in the Assyrian church, and his family soon became active members of the neighbourhood congregation. He took special pride in developing his garden. Standing by a healthy crop of tomatoes this week, he gestured with his trowel at the perimeter walls of a palace Saddam Hussein built for his wife Sajida in the late 70s - a reminder, he said, that the beauty of the region was not just prized by locals.

Last weekend, however, Mr Toma's rural idyll was brutally disrupted. The dread he felt in Baghdad returned. For about 45 terrifying minutes, a barrage of Turkish artillery shells rained down from the clear night sky upon Anishky.

Turkish troops gathered across the border had supposedly been aiming at rebel bases of the Kurdistan Workers party or PKK, believed to be hiding high up in the mountains. They missed.

"Our house was shaking. I told my family it was thunder," said Mr Toma, as he looked at a blackened patch of mountainside about 100 metres behind his house, where a shell had fallen. "But I have lived in Baghdad for 40 years, so I know the sound of bombs. There were 22 of them. We escaped the Islamic terrorists, and now we are terrorised by the Turks. Where else can we run?"

Anishky was not the only village shelled this week. According to Bishop Shlimon in the nearby town of Sersing, at least six other villages in the area, many inhabited by Christian refugees from Baghdad, were affected.

"The bombardment lasted for more than four hours, striking farmlands, killing livestock and destroying orchards and roads used by villagers," he said. "It is a miracle no one was killed."

In the provincial capital of Dohuk, the deputy governor, Gorgees Shlaymoon Kaaee, also a Christian, said that night the area was hit by at least 250 shells. "Our villages have been here for centuries. We have nothing to do with PKK. Yet we are being punished all the same."

The shelling came as the Turkish parliament prepared to sanction cross-border attacks to root out guerrillas from the PKK, which has fought a bloody campaign for Kurdish rights against Turkish forces in the country's heavily Kurdish south-east since 1984. Turkey says 30 soldiers and civilians have been killed in PKK attacks since late September.

Domestic pressure

Under huge domestic pressure to take action, Ankara has deployed about 60,000 troops on its side of the border with Iraq, and has demanded that Iraq's Kurdish leaders, whom it accuses of aiding the PKK, cooperate with Baghdad in eradicating the rebel bases and extraditing PKK leaders. Turkey also accuses the US and the government in Baghdad of not doing enough to crack down on the rebels in Iraqi territory.

Though the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said this week an invasion of northern Iraq was not imminent, Turkish leaders say they reserve the right to protect the country against the rebels it claims are launching attacks from Iraq. The decision was criticised by the international community, who fear an attack would destabilise Iraqi Kurdistan, the country's most secure region. Iraq's Kurdish leaders have urged dialogue and peace.

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, this week demanded the PKK leave Iraqi soil. He predicted any Turkish attacks on northern Iraq would be on a limited scale.

But that is of little comfort to the villagers. They are particularly alarmed by reports that Turkey's generals have drawn up plans to establish a 15-mile buffer zone along the Iraqi side of the border that would include many places where refugees have settled.

Yet the Turks are already here - and have been for over a decade, with the tacit agreement of the Kurdish authorities. At one end of the Sabna valley, a garrison of Turkish soldiers occupies the Barmani airbase. To the east, in the hilltop town of Amediya, a Turkish tank watches from a small outpost. Their role is to monitor the PKK fighters, though the guerrillas are actually far away. "We don't like them to be here, but what can we do?" said Mohsen Qatani, a local tribal chief. "We ignore them and hope they ignore us. It is not our fight."

Bishop Shlimon said an estimated 6,000 Assyrian Christians who have been uprooted by violence elsewhere have found homes along Iraq's northern border with Turkey. The influx has breathed new life into many semi-abandoned rural communities, he said. This week in Anishky, for example, a Christian from Baghdad opened a hall where 1,000 people could gather for weddings.

"But if Turkey continues to raid or bomb us, or even invades," said Bishop Shlimon, "then how will any of us get the peace or the life we are looking for?"

Refugee warning

Local authorities in the Kurdistan region said they feared 30,000 people may be displaced if Turkish troops enter across the border. The UN's high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, also warned of the danger of a refugee crisis in northern Iraq if Turkey attacks. "The northern governorate, or Kurdistan ... has been the most stable area of Iraq," he said. "It is an area also where you find Iraqis from the south and central Iraq who came seeking security. I can only express our deep concern about any development that might lead to meaningful displacements of population."

In the village of Barnatha, Juliet Jabril, 37, said she missed her life and her hairdressing business in Baghdad, which she left in July.

"There was no alternative but to leave," she said tearfully. First she saw an 11-year-old boy, who was selling petrol on the street outside her salon, shot dead. Then masked men visited her salon and told her that hairdressing "was against the will of Allah".

"I know the fate of other hairdressers," she said. "All I want is to live in peace, and I thought Kurdistan would offer me sanctuary." She said she did not support the PKK's violence, but worried that if they were forced to leave their bases, "it might create space for Islamic militants to come in from Iran".

"And then we'd see the masked men in our beautiful valley," she said.

Mar Delly Appointed Cardinal

Based on news from the AsiaNews
18 October 2007

(ZNDA: Rome)  Pope Benedict XVI announced 23 new cardinals during his weekly general audience in Vatican City. The pope will officially appoint the cardinals at a consistory ceremony on 24 November. Among those chosen is the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Mar Emmanuel III Delly.

Mar Delly who celebrated his 80th birthday on October 6, was born in Tel-Keppe (Tel-Kaif), an Assyrian village, predominently populated by the Chaldean faithful.

Mar Delly (right), patriarch of the Chaldean Chatholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI.

In 1952 he was ordained priest in the Chaldean Church and ten years later, on December 16, 1962, he became bishop. In 1967 he was elevated to the post of archbishop even though under the preceding patriarch he was still auxiliary bishop of Baghdad. In December 2003, he was elected Patriarch of Babylon for the Chaldeans, replacing Mar Rophael Bidawid I, who had died in July of that year in Lebanon. This put to an end an impasse at the time when choosing a patriarch was a particularly delicate step given Iraq’s situation under US occupation and strong internal tensions, which resurfaced again during the synod of the Chaldean Church last June. The Chaldean community is ancient and spread around the world, from the United States and Canada to Iran, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria, altogether some 1.5 million members. But for thousands of years Iraq has been its heartland, home to about 800,000 Chaldeans at least until 2003, with the Patriarchate centred in Baghdad.

Eighteen of those selected (those under the age of 80) will join the group of princes of the Church, which forms the conclave to elect the new pope when a pontiff dies. Five of the new names, including Mar Delly, will not be eligible for the conclave however, as they are over the 80-year age limit.

The status of cardinal only comes into effect at the consistory, when the pope publishes the decree of elevation.

Assyrian Universal Alliance-Americas Press Release on AANF

For Immediate Press Release

September 25, 2007

AUA Americas Chapter Board of Directors
AUA Americas Chapter Inc.
2559 South Bascom Ave.
Campbell, California  95008  USA
Phone: 1-408-892-5914
Fax:      1-408-369-0186

On September 1, 2007, a motion on the floor of the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF) annual national convention in San Diego, California, received two-thirds vote compelling the AANF to constitutionally disassociate itself from the Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA).

In associating with the AUA, the historic and constitutional mission of the AANF had been to serve as the representative of the Assyrians residing in the United States of America in order to voice their ideas and opinions at the AUA, which is a worldwide political and civic Assyrian collective institution. It is regrettable that the AANF in the recent past had neglected to serve its constitutional mandates, as follows:

1. There has been an ever exacerbating alienation of the member associations from the AANF. This has resulted in the AANF leadership to either engage in matters that are unknown to some of its member associations or pursue activities that are against their expressed wishes. The AANF leadership in the recent past has ignored and remained irresponsive to the complaints and demands of its member associations.
2. AUA Americas has received numerous complaints from the AANF member associations stating that in blatant abusive measures the AANF rules and regulations in the election proceedings have been grossly manipulated by depriving the voices of dissent and votes of the member associations that express legitimate oppositions.
3. In spite of expressed protest from the member associations, the AANF has and continues to engage in activities that are political in nature and are both in direct conflict with the AANF constitutional By-laws, and breach the U.S. laws applicable to the not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organizations.
4. In numerous instances, the leadership of the AANF has unduly engaged and entrenched itself in petty divisive positions stemming from unwarranted religious conflicts and impositions of a single-party dogma.
5. The AANF has demonstrated gross and material fiscal irresponsibility and has over-extended its activities beyond its constitutional mandates.
6. In the past years, the AANF (i) has not participated in the AUA Congresses and thereby depriving the Assyrians of America from having their legitimate representation, voice, opinions and ideas heard at the AUA, (ii) has failed to name delegates to the AUA, and (iii) has failed to pay its nominal membership fee to the AUA.

As a result, the disaffiliation of the AANF from the AUA is practically irrelevant for the following reasons: (i) the AANF has evolved itself into an illegitimate representative of the Assyrians in America and (ii) ulterior motives have long deviated the AANF in paths that make it unable to bring forward the voice and opinions of the Assyrians of America to the AUA.

In spite of the foregoing environment, the AUA showing restraint did not take action such as expelling the AANF from the AUA for its failure to serve its constitutional mandate as a representative in the AUA. This determination by the AUA was made for two reasons:

A.  For honoring the long history and some honorable traditions of the AANF in its past history; and

B.  For the sake of the Assyrian unity in the face of the ever-increasing attacks against Assyrian institutions by divisive forces.

For the record, at the end it was not the AUA that ceased the affiliation of the AANF, but rather the AANF using trickery on its own affiliates that formally voted to cease its long-standing constitutional mandate to serve as the legitimate representative of the Assyrians of America at the AUA.  

The AUA Americas Chapter and its Board of Directors would like to make it abundantly clear that the entire occurrence at the AANF San Diego convention was fully expected by the AUA. In spite of this given knowledge, the AUA did respond positively to an invitation by the AANF proposing an AANF-mediated conference in the course of the convention. The AUA constitutional policy is to respond affirmatively to legitimate calls for the sake of the Assyrian Cause. Hence, the AUA delegates did participate in one closed-door session with a number of political parties and organizations, consisting of the Chaldean Democratic Forum, the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce, the Chaldean Federation of America, the Assyrian Council of Illinois, Zowaa’d Khorara and the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM). In the session, the AUA presented its comprehensive policy positions elaborately and openly, warning of the enormous dangers of accentuating our nation’s Christian Identity during these turbulent and sensitive times of the rising Islamic Fundamentalism.

As a result of the stated developments, the AUA Americas Chapter is hereby informing all Assyrians of its new policy positions:

1. The recent failures of the AANF and its formal determination for not wanting to serve its mandated representative role at the AUA render the AANF an illegitimate representative of the Assyrians of America. Therefore, the AUA hereby formally severs its relationship with the AANF.
2. All Branches of the AUA Americas Chapter are directed to embark on establishing direct relationship with all the legitimate Assyrian associations, organizations, learned individuals and the Assyrian public at large to bring forward the voice and the opinions of the Assyrians of America to the AUA.

In conclusion, the Assyrian public is hereby assured of the eternal commitment of the AUA to remain representative of all Assyrians and to provide an open and democratic forum for participation of all ideas and opinions that advance the Assyrian Cause. The AUA open forum, however, shall never serve advocacy of any form of despotic and totalitarian impositions that restrict the Assyrian nation’s personal and group freedoms.

Save Assyria Front Report of the Moscow Meeting

"Save Assyria" Front
28 August 2007
Saveassyriafront@yahoo.com

Between 24 and 26 August 2007, a meeting of "Save Assyria" Front (SAF) took place in the Russian capital of Moscow, where the following political and social institutions attended:

• Assyrian Democratic Party (ADP)
• Assyrian Universal Independent Activists Forum (AUIAF)
• Assyria Liberation Party (GFA)
• The Regional Organization of the Assyrians in Russia
• Assyrian National Council of Georgia

The bylaws and the political platform of SAF, as well as the final format of proposals to amend to the Iraqi government regarding the Iraqi constitution were decided. And at the third day was the presidential election of the temporary leadership board that will conduct the Front's work until the next conference, which will be announced at that time, the presidential body has met several political Russian figures where SAF explained the situation in Iraq and explained its stand regarding the serious developments that threaten Iraq, and the Assyrian nation.

Also the elected temporary leadership appointed official representatives in Iraq and the Assyrian Diaspora.  They are as follows:

• Iraqi Office: 
• Ninos Isho:                                                 Syrian Office
• Ashur Giwargis:                                        Lebanese Office
• Dr. Abrohom Aphram:                             Swedesh Office
• Giwargis Shlemon:                                    German Office
• Iskander Bulut:                                         Swiss Office
• Achurena Aksen:                                       Belgian Office
• Joseph Zayya:                                            Russian Office
• Edgard Petbunov & David Adamov:       Georgian Office
• Sarah Betu:                                                 Canadian Office
• Yonan Homa:                                              USA Office
• Elias Yalda:                                                 Australian and New Zealander Office

Save Assyria Front representatives meet in Moscow between 24 and 26 August 2007.

Political Platform of Save Assyria Front (SAF)

Moscow, 26 August 2007

The transition from the reality of our divided nation toward unification is the duty of the Assyrian contemporary political movement, where the rules of procedure and the political agenda of Assyrian organizations and parties recognize the historical and national inherent rights to Assyria, with no non-Assyrian patriotic affiliation by the Assyrian individual to abolish national affiliation.

Due to the tragic situation of the Assyrian cause, an Assyrian expanded Conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden from December 15- 17, 2006, which was followed by the SAF founding conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, from March 15-17, 2007. Since its founding, SAF has emerged as a national, political, and ideological front which believes that “Ashur” (Assyria) is land, people and culture. SAF represents parties and civil and political institutions of the Assyrian nation, which are currently struggling for the inherent national rights of the Assyrian people.

Positions and Objectives of Save Assyria Front
 
At the international level:
 
First: SAF is struggling for the recognition of the Assyrian people as an independent identity, equal with other citizens with rights and obligations in every country.  SAF also strives to  influence key decision-making centers and players, at international, regional, or national levels to ensure the future and the fate of Assyrians as an indigenous people, based on the Charter of the Declaration of Human Rights of 10/December 1948 (and other international covenants).  SAF works to secure the national rights of the Assyrian people regardless of changes to the political map.

Second: SAF rejects all kinds of terrorism and ethnic discrimination among human beings on the basis of color, language, religion, social origin, and differentiating between men and women contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
   
Third: SAF is working at the international, regional and national levels to spread democracy to launch political and civil freedoms, through strengthening relations with the governments and peoples of the world.
 
Fourth: SAF supports the peaceful coexistence between ethnic components internationally, regionally and nationally, preserving ethnic rights equally, furthering freedom and justice, strengthening relations with peace makers, and supports democratic movements and the institutions of civil society, to reinforce national independence and end all forms of exploitation and subordination, politically and economically.

Fifth: SAF recognizes the ability of the United Nations, its affiliates, and other international organizations in resolving disputes peacefully and protecting world peace.
 
At the Assyrian national level:
 
First: SAF maintains that Assyria is occupied; therefore we are working for an Assyrian region to be called “Assyria”, linked directly to the central Iraqi government, where Assyrians will preserve their identity and presence in the land of their ancestors. An Assyrian region is currently defined as follows:
 

North: The international borders of the state of Iraq with Turkey and Syria.
East: Including the Nirwa and Rikan regions, down to the Greater Zab River.
West : The Tigris River.
South: The point where the Greater Zab meets with the Tigris River.
 
Second: SAF assures the authenticity of the Assyrian people in Iraq, and will work to gain the international and Iraqi recognition for the Assyrian people as indigenous people of Iraq, and the right of every Assyrian to gain Iraqi citizenship regardless of residence or current citizenship.
 
Third: SAF assures that the Assyrian identity is inclusive for all Assyrians and rejects all the new-made and compound names to identify the Assyrian nation, and will work to correct the clauses of the Iraqi constitution concerning the Assyrian identity.

Fourth: SAF assures that the Assyrian political decision must be independent and not linked to any other option.

Fifth: SAF will confront and stand against any attempt to marginalize the Assyrian identity as land, people and culture.

Sixth: SAF assures that immigration and deportation from Assyria is incompatible with the national aspirations of the Assyrian nation.  SAF will therefore work to end the forced displacement.

Seventh: SAF assures that claims for the inherent rights of the Assyrian people in Iraq should be directed through the central government and the international level, and has the right to use all means to achieve its goals.

Eighth: SAF maintains the necessity to purify the current Assyrian political atmosphere from remnants of previous eras, in what serves the Assyrian nation’s interest.
 
Ninth: SAF recognizes that Assyrians suffered Genocide at the hands of Turks and Kurds during the 1st World War, and that this Genocide was planned by the Ottoman Empire.  SAF also maintains that the massacre which took place Northern Iraq in August of 1933 was also Genocide, planned and carried out by the Iraqi government, and SAF will work to gain recognition of these Genocides through the legal process.

At the Iraqi national level

First: SAF understands the need for purposeful dialogues with all Iraqi factions to reach firm convictions regarding the recognition of the legitimate national rights of the Assyrian people and the rest of the Iraqi groups who are subject to persecution and forced displacement.

Second: SAF recognizes the necessity of brotherhood between all ethnic and religious groups existing in Iraq.

Third: SAF demands that the Iraqi constitution must equally safeguard the national rights of all Iraqi groups, and rejects any attempts to marginalize the Assyrian nation’s rights and presence in its historical land under sectarian and factional concepts.

Long live Iraq
Long live the Assyrian nation

Assyrians & Armenians in UK Join for Genocide Recognition

Stichting Seyfo Centre
Postbus 515
7500 AM Enschede
The Netherlands
United Kingdom
www.seyfo.com

Press Release

23 October 2007

Sunday 21st October marked a step forward for the Assyrians fighting for genocide recognition committed almost one-hundred years ago in Turkey.  The Armenian community, who have the genocide of their people officially recognised in 19 countries, pledged to work with the Assyrians to also gain genocide recognition, for the very least within the UK.

The event which was organised by CRAG (Campaign for the Recognition of Armenian Genocide), saw scholar Sabri Atman discuss issues surrounding the Genocide of the Assyrians and Armenians, proposing questions for thought and challenging controversial differences between the two communities to inevitably bring them together.

The event, held at the Assyrian House, Ealing, brought together both members of the Assyrian and Armenian community.  It was here that representatives from CRAG and the Armenian Solidarity offered to unite with the Assyrian community in equal footing and on all levels, to achieve recognition of the Assyrian and Armenian. 

The Genocide of the Assyrians and Armenians took place during the rule of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.  The focus of the Empire was to ethnically cleanse the nation, in a bid to create a Pan-Turkish state with one Flag, one race and one religion. This resulted in the brutal murders of millions and an equal deportation of others.

The objective of the lecture was to discuss the possibility of Turkey joining the EU (European Union), and whether this should be allowed while their Government still accept no responsibility for their past crimes. 

Campaigning organisation for the Genocide, Seyfo Centre UK, who were also in attendance and co-hosted the event, would like to extend a warm heartfelt thanks to CRAG for organising the event, and for officially pledging, together with Armenian Solidarity, to work with the Assyrian people in achieving recognition. 

Mr. Nineb Lamassu of Seyfo Centre UK said, “This is of course a positive step forward and this would be empowering not only for the Assyrians but the Armenians too. For from now on we can speak in one united voice and demand what is just from our governments. We are positive these pledges – from both the Armenians and Assyrians - were not rhetorical and we should see them manifested in the very near future”.

Viklund Responds to Baito's Accusations

Courtesy of the EasternStar News Agency
8 October 2007

(ZNDA: Stockholm)  Mr. Nemrod Baito, the Tourism Minister in the Kurdish Regional Government in north Iraq, gave a lecture in an Assyrian club in Sweden on 23 September.  During the lecture Baito accused Margareta Viklund, the chairwoman of the Swedish Committee for Assyrians, who recently visited Assyrians in northern Iraq, for giving false information.

Answering a question about the report of Margareta Viklund concerning the Kurdish persecution of the Assyrians, Nemrod Baito explained that the entire report was incorrect: "It seams Margareta Viklund did not move outside certain places while in Iraq.  I encourage her to visit northern Iraq on my expense in order for her to move freely and write about everything she sees, instead of just writing what she heard from others."

The following is Chairwoman Margareta Viklund's reply to the accusations made by Mr. Nemrod Baito:

Margareta Viklund
Chairwoman of the Swedish committee for Assyrians, SKA

Nemrod Baito is an Assyrian working for Kurdish interests.

He is either bribed, bought, indoctrinated, hypnotized, manipulated with large sums of money in order to betray his own people, or, he is blind to the extent he can no longer se the truth. It is therefore good that a person like me, from the outside, has had the opportunity to go beyond the common fairy tale and see what is really happening. For this I thank my brave and hospitable Assyrian friends!

I became aware of the vulnerable situation of the Assyrians already when I was a member of the Swedish parliament. I realized that they are betrayed by members of their own people. When I informed the minister responsible for integration and international aid about the situation of the Assyrians, I was met with suspicion. The minister could not believe what I had written about the situation of the Assyrians. He decided to send a delegation to northern Iraq in order to check the information I had presented. The delegation he sent was directed only to persons who were totally dependent on the means they had been bribed with and therefore the conclusions of the delegation were completely different from my conclusions. On top of this, the leader of the delegation is married to a Kurdish woman.

This episode is still very sensitive. When I once brought it up for discussion with Assyrians, some of them holding high political positions, there was an awkward and embarrassing silence around the table. But they did not deny the truth in my statement.

During my recent visit to northern Iraq I met Assyrians living in great fear but who do not want to give up what they consider to be their indigenous land and their human rights to live in freedom and with human dignity. They are doing everything possible in order to supply their children with education and a belief in a future in freedom and security. This security is lacking for Assyrians today, whether they live in southern or northern Iraq.

To give the impression that I am lying in my report is one of the worst attacks I have ever been subjected to. But the worst thing is not that I am accused of lying but that all the hundreds of Assyrians I met during my visit are accused of lying. Everything I experienced with my own eyes, ears and other senses is wrong according to Nemrod Baito, despite that no authorities or any bribed Assyrian was involved.

Christian Couple Flogged in Iran for Worshiping in Secret

Courtesy of Iran Focus
14 October 2007

(ZNDA: Tehran)  A Christian couple were flogged in Iran for participating in an “underground Church”, according to an Iranian Christian group.

The unnamed couple were arrested on 21 September, 2005, the report said, adding that a Revolutionary Court reviewed their case in July 2007. Even though the couple had decided to marry seven years ago, the country’s marriage laws - which prohibit the union of ex-Muslims and members of other religious minorities – prevented them from obtaining a certificate of marriage.

The report said that the woman was born a Christian in an Assyrian family and the man was a convert to Christianity prior to getting married. The court ruled that both the man and the woman were Mortad, a description of someone who has committed apostasy by leaving Islam.

A husband and wife couple show marks of flagellation by the Iranian authority.  In Iran it is unlawful for a Moslem to convert to Christianity or marry a Christian.  The woman is from an Assyrian family in Iran.

Plight of Christians of Iraq Raised at UNHCR’s Annual Consultation

Australian Assyrian Christian Association (AACA)
Press Release
22 October 2007

Responding to the concerns of Australian Assyrians raised by the Australian Assyrian Christian Association (AACA), the National Council of Churches of Australia (NCCA) has made presentations at UNHCR’s Annual Consultation with NGOs in Geneva during September and October 2007. The presentations highlighted the plight of Christians in Iraq and their growing number of refugees.

At the rally held in Canberra by AACA in August 2007, the president of NCCA Rev. John Henderson called upon Australians “to pray for Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq”; and “to do whatever is in their power to urge the Australian Government and other governments to assist refugees, particularly Christians who have been singled out for persecution in the Middle East, by providing financial assistance and granting humanitarian and other visas.”

President of AACA, Mr Gaby Kiwarkis said “We are thankful for the efforts of Rev. John Henderson and James Thomson, who have shown a great willingness to advocate on behalf of our refugees and for taking this issue to the international community at the UN.”

Mr James Thomson, Director of Policy and Advocacy of Christian World Service (CWS), presented two briefing papers on behalf of CWS-NCCA that were directed at the Australian Government and UNHCR’s Executive Committee. During several meetings in Geneva, Mr Thomson voiced concern about the lack of international support given to Assyrian refugees who have fled Iraq. 

Although Mr Thomson noted in his communication with AACA that no Assyrian representatives were present during the UNHCR consultation, it has been reported that the World Council of Churches is now urging over 330 member churches “to take up the silence on Iraq’s humanitarian crisis with their own governments.”

The Australian Assyrian Christian Association is a community-based organisation established by Australian Assyrians to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis faced by Assyrian Christian refugees of all denominations and to lobby the Australian Government for effective interventions. For further information, contact Gaby Kiwarkis by email: gaby6@aapt.net.au

Assyrians in Finland Establish New Association

On 16 October 2007 the Assyrians of Oulu (or Uleaborg) in Finland established the Finland Assyria Association.  The FAA is headed by Dr. Simo Parpola, a professor of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki and   Professor Svnate Lundgren, senior lecturer at the Academy of Abo in Finland.

Other board members include Veijo Koivula, secretary of the Christian Democratic members of the Finnish parliament and two Assyrians, Benjamin Hurmiz and Amer Butros Hanna.

Nearly 300 Assyrians live in Finland, most of them in the city of Uleaborg. The Finland Assyria Association members are planning activities to inform the Finnish decision makers, media and the public about the critical situation of the Assyrians in the Middle East. The association hopes the Finnish government will take initiatives within the EU and other forums in order to guarantee the rights of the Assyrians.

Prof. Simo Parpola specializes in the epigraphy of the Akkadian language, and has been working on the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project since 1987. He is also Honorary Member of the American Oriental Society.  Prof. Parpola, through his interpretation of the Assyrian tablets, explains that the Assyrian mode of thought and philosophy eventually reappear in Greek Philosophy and the Kabbalah.

Oulu is the sixth largest city in Finland with a population of 130,000 residents.  Oulu is considered the Silicon Valley of Finland and home to a number of high-technology companies such as Nokia.  Oulu is also best known for the Air Guital World Championships.

To learn more about Oulu click here.

In Moscow Assyrian Cobblers Face the Boot

Courtesy of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
14 October 2007
By Chloe Arnold

(ZNDA: Moscow)  Russian winters are unkind to boots and shoes, and have traditionally provided ample opportunity for the ubiquitous cobbler's shop in Moscow. But with more money in their pockets, many Russians today's are buying new shoes instead of mending their old ones. Now the trade faces a more formidable threat: Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is calling for a crackdown on street stalls.
 
"My name is Yukhan Daniilovich Bavidov," says a man working in a small street stall. "I've been here in Moscow since 1955. I've had two cobbler's stalls, and I've been in this one for 35 years. Before that I worked in a stall on Chekhov Street, as it used to be called. Now it's Little Dmitrovka Street."

A Service in Demand

"When they arrested us, they forced us to say that we were Kurds, not Assyrians. But we kicked up a great fuss. We wouldn't say we were Kurds. We are Assyrians, and we will always be Assyrians."

Trade is brisk at Bavidov's tiny stall, located just a stone's throw from the Bolshoi Theater in central Moscow. A long row of shoelaces, in every size and color, hangs from a piece of wire that stretches the length of his shop window. Inside, there's just enough room for a cobbler's wheel, a rickety stool, and a battered leather satchel full of tools.

"What is he going to do with the people who work in them? Are they just supposed to lie down and die? You have to provide for people."

A distraught young woman in an expensive suit comes in to have the heel of one of her gold stilettos repaired. She perches on a pile of boxes, as Bavidov lovingly tends to the shoe. Then an old man arrives with three pairs of well-worn winter boots wrapped in a paper bag.

Like many of Moscow's cobblers, Bavidov is an Assyrian Christian, descendents of the ancient kingdom of Assyria through which the Euphrates and Tigris rivers flowed. Bavidov's parents lived in Ottoman Turkey until the empire targeted the Assyrian diaspora in 1914, reportedly massacring hundreds of thousands.

Like thousands of others, Bavidov's parents fled to Russia and the South Caucasus, where they were granted asylum by the tsar.

"From the time of World War I we started to work, to labor, so the sweat stood on our brows, he said. "And then, in 1949, 90 percent of the Assyrian population was banished to Tomsk in Siberia. Most came from Azerbaijan and Georgia. When they arrested us, they forced us to say that we were Kurds, not Assyrians. But we kicked up a great fuss. We wouldn't say we were Kurds. We are Assyrians, and we will always be Assyrians."

Not Following In Dad's Footsteps

Bavidov's family was rehabilitated in 1955 and he moved to Moscow, where he was apprenticed to an Armenian shoemaker. Bavidov says that in those days, 90 percent of Moscow's Assyrian community worked as cobblers and shoe-shiners. The more experienced ones had their own stalls, the younger ones simply set up shop on the pavement.

But today, he says sadly, their children don't want to follow in their fathers' footsteps.

"The old ones have gone, the young ones don't want to be cobblers," he added. "They've become too bright. They have different qualifications. Look here, I have four children. The first went to university. The second went to university. The third went to a vocational college. Do you really think they'd want to become cobblers now?"

Bavidov sets to work hammering a steel cap onto the heel of a man's leather shoe. But this is a sound fast disappearing from the streets of Moscow. It isn't just that Russia's Assyrian community is moving away from the cobbler's trade.

Beware Of Luzhkov

Yury Luzhkov, the powerful mayor of Moscow, has declared war on the thousands of stalls and kiosks that clutter the capital's streets.

This week, he told television viewers that street stalls were unsanitary and provided poor service -- and vowed to get rid of them all.

But Bavidov, who has lived through exile to Siberia, World War II and the births of four children, seven grandchildren, and one great grandchild, is not worried.

"Oh yes, I read an article about this! But how is he going to do it? OK, so he clears them all away. Fine. But what is he going to do with the people who work in them? Are they just supposed to lie down and die? You have to provide for people. But what do I have to be afraid of now? What do I have to fear? Let's just wait and see what happens."

Sweden's Fashion Police Picks Nuri Kino as Most Stylish

(ZNDA:  Stockholm)  Camilla Thulin, Sweden’s leading stylist and designer has chosen ten Swedish men she considers living on the edge of good taste and style for her newly-published book, "Karlar med stil" or Men with Style .   Among these is the well-known Assyrian journalist and filmmaker, Nuri Kino.

Following the success of her book, Style for Women, Thulin's new book went on sale on 9 October.  In her book, she calls Kino, “The Star of the Middle East”, and dedicates eight pages to him and his two younger brothers, Amanuel and Markus.   Thulin writes:

"He [Kino} is perhaps Sweden’s most awarded reporter with such prizes as three Guldspaden Award, an Ikaro prize, and a”Golden Palm” from Hollywood in his collection. He has also been chosen as the Assyrian of the Year in the World, a prize and a heritage he cherishes with pride.  This investigative journalist, who fears nothing, is rumored to being extremely vain and well-dressed.  I have even heard that he has flapped around the corridors of the radio house wearing a cloak, hardly a normal thing to do. At the Swedish radio house, the dress code is “to work but not be seen” and to be taken really seriously one must be fairly gray and unglamorous. Nuri Kino is deadly serious, but often chokes the journalism society by looking like a film star.  A fact which amuses him greatly."

About the book, Nuri Kino comments: "At first I was skeptical of being part of something like a book that teaches Swedish men class and style. But the author Camilla Thulin is a person who does not give in that easily. We had a lot of fun during the photographing sessions and the interview, and now I feel proud and happy to be part of the book. I’m honoured."

In the book, Nuri Kino tells why he thinks that Assyrians are so aware of their looks. It is interesting, rewarding and inspiring information.

Critics predict that Men with Style may just be the Christmas gift of the year for men.

Photos of the Assyrian journalist and filmmaker, Nuri Kino, in the newly-published fashion book in Sweden, "Style For Men".

Inga modeller. Bara äkta karlar! Stil måste inte vara trendigt eller ändra sig efter varje säsong. Tvärtom är stil något man håller sig till och utvecklar genom åren. Det anser Camilla Thulin, som besökt några av Sveriges mest välklädda män: Möt bland andra: Johan Hakelius, Peder Lamm, Lars Nittve, Kjell A Nordström, Peter Kvint, Dregen och Jean Pierre Barda. Samtliga poserar i sina hem, i sina egna kläder, med egna accessoarer.   Personligt berättar de om sitt förhållningssätt till kläder och mode. Boken innehåller dessutom shoppingtips, råd om hur man enkelt förvandlar och förbättrar sin stil och praktiska skötselråd. Karlar med stil är en inspirationsbok för män som vill snygga till sig!  Camilla Thulin är underklädsdesigner, kostymtecknare, kreatör och stylist. Hon har tidigare givit ut bokenStil på Bokförlaget DN.

Rosie Malek-Yonan in Latest Role in "Rendition"

News Release

Media Contact for Rosie Malek-Yonan
Trip Miller
The Trip Miller Company
tripmiller@sbcglobal.net

LOS ANGELES, 22 October 2007 – Rosie Malek-Yonan’s latest role in New Line Cinema’s Rendition is opposite Reese Witherspoon as an Egyptian mother, Nuru El-Ibrahimi, whose son, played by Omar Matwaly, is kidnapped by the CIA in Oscar winning director, Gavin Hood’s politically charged thriller that sweeps through the world of terrorism and torture.

Malek-Yonan is an Assyrian activist and author, intimately familiar with her nation’s struggle as minority Christians in the Middle-East.  With the publication of her book, The Crimson Field in 2005, Malek-Yonan brought the Assyrian Genocide to the limelight.  While Armenians are awaiting the next step by the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize the Genocide, Malek-Yonan strives to set the record straight that the Assyrians and Greeks were also a part of the Genocide by the Ottoman Turks during WWI, wherein the Assyrians lost two-thirds of their population.

Due to her expertise on the ongoing Assyrian Genocide, as evident from her book, The Crimson Field, on the suggestion of famed Oscar winning director, Terrence Malick, in 2006 Malek-Yonan testified on Capitol Hill about the plight of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq.

Rendition premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September 2007 and is now in theatres worldwide.  The film also stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, and Alan Arkin.  Film Critic, Roger Ebert, gave the film four out of four stars, saying that, “Rendition is valuable and rare.  It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong.”

Rising Assyrian Stars Appear in "The Kingdom"

(ZNDA: Los Angeles)   Two rising Assyrian acting stars, Yasmine Hannani and Lilly Enwiya, appear in the recently released mega-hit, The Kingdom, directed by Peter Berg.

Yasmine Hannani plays "the Aunt" in The Kingdom.

Yasmine Hannani's face is familiar to the readers of Zinda Magazine (See Zinda 24 May 2006).  She's appeared in "Blockbuster! The 9/11 Commission Report (2001)" a dramatization of events leading up to the attacks of September 11, and in Albert Brooks' "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World."  Hanani competed as Miss Iraq in the Miss Asia USA Pageant, held in Southern California in 2006.

Hannani in a scene, Battle for Haditha, from The Kingdom, Photo by Phil Fisk.

Lilly Enwiya's acting career began back in Chicago in 2001 when she was noticed in her freshman year in college. In 2002 she moved to Arizona and continued to pursue her dream. In 2004 she filmed a commercial and a year later found a casting agency in Phoenix that landed her the part of "Maggie Hayes" in The Kingdom. 

Notable Hollywood stars appearing in The Kingdom are Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman.

The Kingdom is about an elite group of FBI agents on the hunt for a terrorist. Maggie Hayes appears in a conference room listening to Jamie Foxx talking about who the agents are after and the identity of the FBI agents lost due to the terrorism attack.  

In August 2006 Enwiya filmed another film "The Road Less Traveled", an independent film which will be released on DVD.

Lily Enwiya plays the role of FBI agent, Maggie Hayes, in The Kingdom.

Rabat Tepe Cuneiform Inscriptions Confirm King Sargon’s Invasion of Northwest Iran

Courtesy of the Tehran Times
30 September 2007

The Assyrian king, Sargon II (r. 722 - 705 BC), with the crowned prince, Sennacherib (left).  Lake Urmia (Yama d'Urmi) region was occupied by Sargon's Assyrian forces around 713 B.C.

(ZNDA: Tehran)  Four brick inscriptions discovered at the 3000-year-old site of Rabat Tepe II in northwestern Iran substantiate that the Assyrian king Sargon II invaded the region.

The 10 centimeter-thick and 34x34 centimeter-square bricks have been inscribed with white glazed cuneiform script.

The inscribed bricks were unearthed by a team of Iranian archaeologists during the second season of excavations at the site in October and December 2006.

“Two of the bricks carry the name of a Mannai king (same as Minni in the Bible:  see Minni in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 51:27), Ata or Ada, and the name of his land, Shurdiro or Dira,” team director Reza Heidari told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday.

The other two inscriptions contain the names of Bal and Nabu, two gods worshiped by the Assyrians, he added.

The inscriptions were deciphered for the first time by Rasul Bashshash Kanzak, an expert at Iran’s Cultural Heritage Research Center, and later by a linguist of the British Museum. The translations of both experts matched.

To see the entire map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire click here.

Up until now, inscriptions using white glaze have only been discovered at the famous Gate of Babylon.

Ancient inscriptions previously discovered in the region have been written on cliffs or on steles, but these are the first brick inscriptions to be discovered in the area, which is located near the town of Sardasht in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province.

Archaeologists believe that Rabat Tepe was the capital of the Musasir state about 3000 years ago.

Musasir was a semi-independent buffer state bordering Mannai between Assyria and Urartu. It was a vassal state of Assyria yet Urartu had some claim over it.

They also surmise that it was an ancient city probably located near the upper Great Zab River between Lake Urmia in Iran and Lake Van, in present-day Turkey. Musasir was particularly important during the first half of the 1st millennium BC and is known primarily from bas-reliefs and inscriptions of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who captured it in 714.

According to the inscriptions, Sargon first plundered the palace and storerooms that belonged to Urzana, the king of Musasir, and then seized the even richer contents of the temple of Haldi, the god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.

Assyrian References in Modern Near Eastern Literature

(Part one)

Stan Shabaz
Washington D.C.

There are some works of literature that one re-reads several times. I have a list of books that draw me back to them every now and then. One of them is “Memoirs of a Vagrant Soul or, The Pitted Face” by Mikhail Naimy [1]. It contains the memoirs of a fictional character known only as Pitted Face. Pitted Face writes that he is “the silent part of humanity. The rest are all talkers.” He considers himself “a man withdrawn from the world of men and wrapped […] in silence that he may reach a world of a higher order.”
                                                         
One of the characters whom Pitted Face encounters is named “Sennacherib”[2]. An Assyrian name to be sure. Pitted Face describes Sennacherib as follows:

The man walks and behaves like an enigma. Every time I look at him I feel as if I am looking at a great question mark. [Sennacherib has a] long, aquiline nose [and eyes that are] pale, calm, cold, deep and sad […] He is sparing of words. His voice is low and barely audible; his movements are slow, deliberate and sluggish. […] For some reason I find solace in Sennacherib’s presence, even if I be in no need of any solace from men.[3]

The quiet and calm Sennacherib suffers a concussion after trying to break up a fight between two patrons in a Syrian coffee house in New York. The patrons physically come to blows, arguing over an arcane detail of Arabic grammar, and poor Sennacherib the peacemaker gets hit over the head with a chair in the mêlée! Who is this mysterious Sennacherib? Is Sennacherib an Assyrian? Or does the name have a different significance? Well, I don’t want to spoil the story for those who have yet to read the book. But the name did get me to wondering if there were other potential references to Assyrians in modern Near Eastern literature.

Surprisingly, Assyrian characters are relatively rare, excepting of course, works written by Assyrian authors.[4] However, I was able to find a second instance of a “Sennacherib” character, although in a slightly modified form. Said Aql [5]  has a character named “Sanharib” in a story contained in his book “Lubnan in Haka”. Aql’s Sanharib is a monarch ruling in Yerevan in 912 AD. This monarch is portrayed as kind hearted and intelligent. Sanharib is responsible for getting the great scholar Qusta ibn Luqa al Ba’albaki to come and live and work in Yerevan after having served in the court of Baghdad many years as one of its leading intellectuals. In Aql’s telling of the tale Sanharib is a monarch, but there was in actuality no monarch by that name in 10th century Yerevan. The historic Sanharib was more likely a court advisor and perhaps he was an Assyrian, especially since he was responsible for bringing Qusta ibn Luqa all the way from Baghdad to Yerevan.

So we have two stories with a character named after the great king of the Assyrian empire. Yet despite the name, in neither instance are they referred to explicitly as Assyrian. As a matter of fact in both cases, aside from the name, their Assyrian-ness is left much in doubt.

William Saroyan and G.I. Gurdjieff

After a brief survey of the modern literature of the Near East, I was only able to find two instances of a full-fledged modern Assyrian character, explicitly stated as such. The first is in William Saroyan’s short story “Seventy Thousand Assyrians”. In this story Saroyan describes his encounter with an Assyrian barber in San Francisco in 1933. The barber’s name was Theodore Badal, “a son of an ancient race, himself youthful and alert, yet hopeless”. Why is Badal hopeless? Saroyan relates Badal’s answer as follows:

"Well," he laughed, "simply because everything is washed up over there." I am repeating his words precisely, putting in nothing of my own. "We were a great people once," he went on. "But that was yesterday, the day before yesterday. Now we are a topic in ancient history. We had a great civilization. They're still admiring it. Now I am in America learning how to cut hair. We're washed up as a race, we're through, it's all over, why should I learn to read the language? We have no writers, we have no news. […] We went in for the wrong things. We went in for the simple things, peace and quiet and families. We didn't go in for machinery and conquest and militarism. We didn't go in for diplomacy and deceit and the invention of machine-guns and poison gases. Well, there is no use in being disappointed. We had our day, I suppose."[6]

Saroyan presents us with a rather dour and depressing view of Assyrians in 1933, no doubt, due in large measure to the massacre in Simele [7] of that year. But at least Saroyan makes an explicit reference to Assyrians and introduces his readers to an authentic, if somewhat pessimistic, Assyrian character.

The other example is found in the book “Meetings with Remarkable Men” by G. I. Gurdjieff (1877-1949). Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol [8] and was a mystic and spiritualist writer of Greco-Armenian heritage. In his book he devotes an entire chapter to Abram (Abrashka) Yelov, an Assyrian bookseller in Tiflis.  Gurdjieff described Yelov as an:

artful dodger if ever there was one, but for me an irreplaceable friend. He was even then a walking catalogue, for he knew innumerable titles of books in almost all languages, the names of authors, and also the date and place of publication of any book, and where it could be obtained. […] Besides being a phenomenon in the knowledge of books and authors, Yelov later on became a phenomenon in the knowledge of languages. I, who then spoke eighteen languages, felt a green­horn in comparison with him. Before I knew a single word of any European language, he already spoke almost all of them so perfectly that it was hard to tell that the language he was speaking was not his own. For example, the following incident occurred: Skridlov, the professor of archaeology […] had to take a certain Afghan holy relic across the [8] river Amu Darya, but to do this was impossible since a close watch was kept on all persons crossing the Russian border in either direction, both by the Afghan guards and by the British. Having obtained somewhere the old uniform of a British officer, Yelov put it on, went over to the post where the British troops were stationed and passed himself off as a British officer from India who had come there to hunt Turkestan tigers. He was able to distract their attention so well with his English stories that we had rime, without hurrying and without being observed by the British troops, to take what we wanted from one bank to the other. [9]

According to Gurdjieff, Yelov later moved to Moscow, passed the examination for the prestigious Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages and received a degree in philology at the Kazan University. He is said to have emigrated to the United States after he lost his numerous book and stationary stores in the Russian revolution. The character of Abram Yelov even made it into the 1979 film adaptation of this book.[10] This film is one of the few examples with a modern[11] Assyrian character in it; a character whose Assyrian ethnicity is explicitly mentioned in the film.[12]

Historical motifs in Near Eastern literature and popular culture

Beyond these references to individual Assyrians living in our modern era, we must also look for historical references to the ancient Assyrian civilization. But, before we look for references to ancient Assyria, we first need to examine the use of historical motifs in general. For this survey we will mainly confine ourselves to the works of the Arabic language[13] literary renaissance of the early modern era.

Popular motifs of this era included historic and/or mythic personalities of the ancient and medieval Near East. Examples include works by Dr. Khalil Saadeh[14] ( “Ceasar and Cleopatra”, “Anthony and Cleopatra” ), Said Aql ( “Cadmus” ), Salim Bustani ( “Zenobia” ), George Masru’ah ( “Ibn Zikar”[15] ), Chekri Ganem[16] ( “Antar” ) and Jurji Zeidan[17] ( “Armanusa al-Misriyyah”[18], “Fatat Ghassan”[19], “Ghadat Karbala”[20], “Shajarat al-Durr” [21], etc.).

This genre was so powerful that it even expanded beyond the bounds of the printed page and made its way into early theatre of the region as in the plays of Marun al-Naqqash [22] ( “Harun al-Rashid” ) and Najib al-Haddad ( “Hamdan” ) and in later years appeared as themes in major musical theatre works such as in the Rahbani brother’s “Petra” and “The Days of Fakr Din”. Historical themes even made their way into the cinema of the region. Jurji Zeidan’s novel “Shajarat al-Durr” was made into a film by Ahmad Galal in 1935 and Ahmed Badrakhan made “Dananir” in 1940. [23] There were even a few major epics made in later years as well, such as Yusuf Chahine’s “Saladin” in 1963 and “al-Qadisiya”, made in 1982 by Salah Abu Seif. [24]

The popularity of the historical narrative in this period served a very real need. These stories of bygone glory and heroism helped to galvanize an oppressed people with the confidence and optimism to reassert their national identities and to build new indigenous political, social and national structures and institutions at a time when the oppressive Ottoman Empire was faltering and western European imperial powers greedily plotted to carve up its remains for themselves. However, once a measure of independence was achieved and state structures came into existence, literary genres started to change. Stories started to be set in more modern, urban settings; heroic protagonists and happy endings were replaced with more realistic, controversial and ambivalent storylines. [25]

Yet even though the popularity of the historical novel has lost some of its popular appeal since its heyday during Jurji Zeidan’s time, we cannot deny that the genre is still able to capture a hold of the imagination of writers, artists and the general public alike. This can be seen in Mansour Rahbani’s new work “Zenobia” a star-studded historical epic musical. Co-composer and director Marwan Rahbani states “History repeats itself. We have to look into our past and history so that we'd be able to draw conclusions about the future. Zenobia is neither a documentary nor a political speech. It is a pure work of drama based on historical facts.”[26]

Returning to our survey, we see that intellectuals, journalists and socio-political activists of the region were extremely interested in using historical motifs in their writings. These historical motifs were very popular and covered a wide range of Egyptian, Phoenician, and Arab storylines. But Assyrian motifs seem notably absent in the historical fiction of this era. This may be due perhaps to a certain lack of familiarity with the narratives of Assyrian and Mesopotamian history. But also we must consider the specific circumstances of the time. Phoenician storylines centered prominently since the majority of these writers were originally from the coastal regions of Syria and Lebanon; Egyptian storylines were natural as well, since many of these writers spent at least some time in Egypt, due to the Ottoman occupation of their homeland; and Arab storylines figured prominently as the assertion and promotion of an Arab historical legacy was seen as a means to hasten the breakup, or at the very least, the decentralization of the Ottoman Empire. It was also a means for these intellectuals and writers, many of whom were Christian, to promote a secular narrative of Arab history; one in which sympathetic Christian characters figured prominently.[27]

Yet, despite this noticeable lack of Assyrian-centric historical fiction, there still seemed to be an interest in Assyrian and Mesopotamian themes. An example of this is the fact that Tolstoy’s short story “Assarhadon” was translated from Russian into Arabic in Egypt in 1928. Also, Jamil al-Mudawwar, the editor of “al-Muwayyid”, had written “Tarikh Babil wa-Ashur” (“History of Babylonia and Assyria”). This work would become serialized in the pages of “al-Muqtataf” [28] in 1879-1880. And in 1905, Zaynab Fawwaz [29] wrote the novel “al-Malik Qurush” (“King Cyrus”), which touches upon some aspects of Mesopotamian history. It tells of the rise of Cyrus after the defeat of Nineveh and Babylon. [30]

Other examples can be seen in some of the works of Said Aql. Even though Aql’s stories were unapologetically Phoenician-centric, he does include an Assyrian connection every now and then as in the beautiful story of “Ranzabaal” involving King Assurbanipal’s encounter with a Sidonian princess.[31] Although Aql usually portrayed the Assyrians as the foil of his Phoenician protagonists, his portrayal of the Assyrian empire was not wholly unsympathetic.

So we can discern at least some interest in Assyrian themes. Yet, while not a major motif in the historical fiction of the era, there is a genre where Assyrian references were much more prominent. And that is in the works of political and cultural essayists. Some of these essayists include Ameen Rihani, Charles Corm and Kahlil Gibran. In the second part of this essay we will review some of their writings and see how they included references to Assyrian themes in their works.

Part two will appear in the next issue of Zinda.

Notes:

Assyrian Suffering Overlooked in Iraq

Charles Rice
Indiana

The Assyrians have lived in Iraq since 5,000 B.C. Ethnically distinct from Arabs and Kurds, they are Christians and speak neo-Aramaic, similar to the language of Christ. They include Chaldean Catholic, Apostolic Catholic and Syriac Orthodox churches.

"In Iraq," Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako, of Kirkuk, said last April, "Christians are dying, the Church is disappearing under persecution, threats and violence by extremists who are leaving us no choice: conversion or exile."

Prof. Charles Rice

Last June, the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) issued a report, "Incipient Genocide: The Ethnic Cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq." In 2003, Christians and smaller non-Muslim groups were about one million of Iraq's 26 million people. Probably 50 percent have now fled the country. Persecution began after the Gulf War and escalated after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. AINA reported that from 1995 to 2002 there were 19 murders of Assyrians in Iraq, with none in 1996, 2000 and 2001. From 2003 to June 2007 there were 370. Assyrians and other Christians have been attacked by Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and al-Qaeda in every part of Iraq. The Assyrians, with no tribal structure, military or militia, are defenseless. Since the coming of Islam in 630 A.D., noted AINA, Assyrians have suffered thirty "genocides at the hands of Muslims," several in the 20th century. They experienced comparative safety and tolerance under the oppressive but secular regime of Saddam Hussein.

Since the fall of Saddam, the persecution has intensified, with the added motive that many Iraqi Christians who speak English have worked for Americans. The AINA study, however, confirms that the persecution is primarily religious. Last October, for instance, Ayad Tariq, a 14-year-old Assyrian in Baquba, was accosted at his place of employment by insurgents who asked if he was a "Christian sinner." "Yes," he replied, "I am a Christian, but I am not a sinner." The insurgents quickly pronounced him a "dirty Christian sinner" and, shouting "Allahu akbar!," beheaded him. Also last October, Father Paulos Iskander was kidnapped in Mosul. His head, arms and legs were severed from his body.

AINA graphically described many attacks since 2003, which we can only summarize here. Five priests have been kidnapped and released after ransom was paid. 33 churches have been attacked or bombed since June 2004. At least 13 young women have been abducted and raped, causing some of them to commit suicide. Female students have been targeted in Basra and Mosul for not wearing veils; some had nitric acid squirted on their faces. Elders of a village in Mosul were warned not to send females to universities. The Madhi Army circulated a letter warning all Christian women to veil themselves. Al-Qaeda moved into an Assyrian neighborhood and began collecting the jizya tax and demanding that females be sent to the mosque to be married off to Muslims. Assyrian businesses have been targeted, especially stores selling alcohol, radios, TVs and music. On the night of Sept. 7, 2005, a fire, with arson suspected, destroyed or damaged more than 500 Assyrian shops in Dora. The fire trucks did not arrive for hours. The owners had to watch from their homes. If they violated curfew, they would be shot. Property of Christians has been confiscated by Kurds and Shiites. The Kurds blocked foreign aid for Assyrian communities and diverted water and other resources from Assyrians to Kurds. Kurdish forces blockaded Assyrian villages. Children have been kidnapped and transferred to Kurdish families.

The Assyrians and their supporters urge, in the words of Dr. Nina Shea of the Center for Religious Freedom, the "establishment of a new autonomous district," in the Nineveh Plains "that would be jointly governed" by Assyrians and smaller religious groups. Unfortunately, as Shea stated on Aug. 27, 2007, "there has been no progress" on creating "a Nineveh province" and "U.S. policy runs counter to the initiative. When asked about such a haven, the State Department's Iraq policy coordinator, David Satterfield, told me that it is 'against U.S. policy to further sectarianism.' The administration has not even brought together leaders of Iraq's non-Muslim minorities to discuss solutions."

Meanwhile, the mayhem continues. Father Ragheed Ganni and three deacons were assassinated by gunmen as they drove from a church in Mosul after Mass on June 3, 2007. Their car was bobby-trapped by the gunmen to prevent retrieval of the bodies. On June 19, at a Mass for Father Ganni and the deacons in Southfield, Michigan, Chaldean Catholic Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Bishop Ibrahim has a point. One result of the Iraq War has been to expose the Assyrians and other Christians to genocidal repression by all the major Muslim groups who appear to be of one mind on this. But the U.S. should not leave Iraq without ensuring the safety of those minorities in their homeland.

Bishop Ibrahim is entitled to make his point, because in December, 2002, he warned the United States against "going to war, which will be a disaster for the whole region, not only for the Iraqi people." Nor was he the only Chaldean prelate to do so. On Jan. 9, 2003, Chaldean Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad warned that "the war threatens our children, our elderly, our sick and our young." We can now add to that list the Christians who are about to disappear from Iraq. As Shea put it, "The very existence of these non-Muslims within Iraq may soon be extinguished under pervasive persecution that the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees says is targeted against them due to religion." President Bush should have listened to the Chaldeans.

Professor emeritus Charles Rice is on the faculty of the Notre Dame University Law School.  He and his wife, Mary, have ten children and they reside in Mishawaka, Indiana.

Save the Gnostics

THE United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another unfortunate and entirely unintended consequence of our invasion of Iraq — though that will be of little comfort to the Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.

The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language (Mandaic, a form of Aramaic close to the dialect of the Babylonian Talmud), an impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran.

Raymond Verdaguer

Practitioners of a religion at least as old as Christianity, the Mandeans have witnessed the rise of Islam; the Mongol invasion; the arrival of Europeans, who mistakenly identified them as “Christians of St. John,” because of their veneration of John the Baptist; and, most recently, the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, who drained the marshes after the first gulf war, an ecological catastrophe equivalent to destroying the Everglades. They have withstood everything — until now.

Like their ancestors, contemporary Mandeans were able to survive as a community because of the delicate balance achieved among Iraq’s many peoples over centuries of cohabitation. But our reckless prosecution of the war destroyed this balance, and the Mandeans, whose pacifist religion prohibits them from carrying weapons even for self-defense, found themselves victims of kidnappings, extortion, rapes, beatings, murders and forced conversions carried out by radical Islamic groups and common criminals.

When American forces invaded in 2003, there were probably 60,000 Mandeans in Iraq; today, fewer than 5,000 remain. Like millions of other Iraqis, those who managed to escape have become refugees, primarily in Syria and Jordan, with smaller numbers in Australia, Indonesia, Sweden and Yemen.

Unlike Christian and Muslim refugees, the Mandeans do not belong to a larger religious community that can provide them with protection and aid. Fundamentally alone in the world, the Mandeans are even more vulnerable and fewer than the Yazidis, another Iraqi minority that has suffered tremendously, since the latter have their own villages in the generally safer north, while the Mandeans are scattered in pockets around the south. They are the only minority group in Iraq without a safe enclave.

When Mandeans do seek refuge in the Kurdish-dominated north, they report that they are typically viewed as southern, Arabic-speaking interlopers, or, if their Mandean identity is discovered, persecuted as religious infidels. In Syria and Jordan, Mandeans feel unable to practice their religion openly and, after years of severe deprivation, some have begun to convert simply in order to receive aid from Muslim and Christian relief agencies.

Mandean activists have told me that the best hope for their ancient culture to survive is if a critical mass of Mandeans is allowed to settle in the United States, where they could rebuild their community and practice their traditions without fear of persecution. If this does not happen, individual Mandeans may survive for another generation, isolated in countries around the world, but the community and its culture may disappear forever.

Of the mere 500 Iraqi refugees who were allowed into the United States from April 2003 to April 2007, only a few were Mandeans. And despite the Bush administration’s commitment to let in 7,000 refugees in the fiscal year that ended last month, fewer than 2,000, including just three Iraqi Mandean families, entered the country.

In September, the Senate took a step in the right direction when it unanimously passed an amendment to a defense bill that grants privileged refugee status to members of a religious or minority community who are identified by the State Department as a persecuted group and have close relatives in the United States. But because so few Mandeans live here, this will do little for those seeking asylum. The legislation, however, also authorizes the State and Homeland Security Departments to grant privileged status to “other persecuted groups,” as they see fit.

If all Iraqi Mandeans are granted privileged status and allowed to enter the United States in significant numbers, it may just be enough to save them and their ancient culture from destruction. If not, after 2,000 years of history, of persecution and tenacious survival, the last Gnostics will finally disappear, victims of an extinction inadvertently set into motion by our nation’s negligence in Iraq.

Nathaniel Deutsch is a professor of religion at Swarthmore College.

Milwaukee Talks: DJ & Author Obie Yadgar

Courtesy of OnMilwaukee.com
17 September 2007
By Bobby Tanzilo

Obie Yadgar was long a stalwart in Milwaukee radio and long-time fans of public radio as well as jazz and classical programming will remember his easily-recognizable name and voice.

Although he's no longer riding the airwaves, Yadgar has not stopped working. After publishing his first novel in 2005, Yadgar returns with a new book. "Obie's Opus" is a collection of classical music anecdotes that have entertained his radio audiences over the years, mixed with some of his own radio memories.

Of Assyrian descent, Yadgar also writes a regular column for the Web site of Assyrian magazine Zinda. Some of those columns will be collected in an upcoming volume.

We recently asked Yadgar about his long radio career and his more recent, print-based vocation.

Obie Yadgar, author of two books and Zinda Magazine's popular "Musing with My Samovar" stories.  Mr. Yadgar's next book, a collection of his Zinda stories will be published by Zinda Magazine in 2008.

OMC: Are you still active in radio?

OY: No, I am no longer in radio. Even though I loved the music and the audience, my last stint at WFMR was hell. The station's focus and philosophy soured me on radio in a most profound way. I still had to make a living, though, but the jobs were gone in a dying format. Since I've enjoyed a dual career as writer and broadcaster -- writing being my first love -- I chose to concentrate on my writing. I still want to do some limited radio, something in NPR, some type of intelligent and artistic talk show, and some classical music, if the opportunity arises.

OMC: How did you get started in the business?

OY: I had always loved radio, especially to do my own show where I would play the music I loved. After returning from Vietnam, where I served as a combat correspondent for the U.S. Army, I found a gig in a jazz station in San Diego, Calif. After that, I worked in pop station in upstate New York, an NPR station in St. Louis. Then WFMR. I also worked at WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR station. My best gig, though, was doing classical morning drive at the former WNIB in Chicago.

OMC: Do you listen to the radio a lot? What do you think of the current state of radio in Milwaukee and beyond?

OY: The only station in Milwaukee I listen to regularly is WUWM, for its news programming. I also used to listen regularly to WYMS, but I stopped listening when it dumped its jazz programming. Right-wing talk radio scares me and I don't listen to it. Rock and syrupy saxophone stations give me heartburn. I still do like some country music, though, and prefer the stations that play the more traditional country. Overall, except for NPR, I lament what's happened to radio, where the bottom-line programmers and managers have destroyed creativity and originality. For the most part, I find today's radio embarrassing and pathetic.

OMC: I can remember listening to you on the radio in the car years ago and yours remains for me a very Milwaukee voice. Do you hear that a lot from people?

OY: People still tell me I was very much part of Milwaukee's gentle and intimate voice. Part of its artistic voice. And I was myself behind the microphone and it showed, they said. They liked my creativity. I am grateful to them for their kindness, and for putting up with me. I have lived in many places, but Milwaukee will always remain special to me because of its people and its quality of life.

OMC: Tell us about your new book?

OY: I used to pepper my radio programs with amusing stories and anecdotes about the lives of the great composers. Here's a good one: An aging actor called on the composer Jacques Offenbach on the morning of October 5, 1880. "How is he?" he asked the servant. "Mr. Offenbach is dead," replied the servant. "He died peacefully, without knowing anything about it." The actor signed and said, "Ah, he will be surprised when he finds out."

Here's another good one: In 1896, The Item, a New Orleans newspaper, had no available music critic to cover Paderewski's piano concert, so the boxing editor was sent instead. "In my opinion, he is the best two-handed piano fighter that ever wore hair," the man wrote. "If I were a piano, I wouldn't travel as Paderewski's sparring partner for two-thirds of the gross receipts."

Well, people loved the stories I told and kept asking me to publish them in a book. I did. My recently published book "Obie's Opus" is a collection of many of these stories, colored with some of my reflections on life from behind the radio microphone.

OMC: Was it hard to collect them?

OY: I collected these stories through the years. I don't exactly remember where I found them, except that my listeners told me many of them. Little by little I began writing them down. People who have read the book love it for its humor. "Obie's Opus" is available from my Web site at obieyadgar.com, and also from Schwartz, Barnes & Noble in Bayshore Town Center and Borders at the River Point Shopping Center, at Port and Brown Deer Roads. It can be ordered from other stores as well.

OMC: This is your second book, right? Can you tell us a bit about the novel you wrote?

OY: My first novel "Will's Music" was published in 2005, when I was working at WNIB in Chicago. "Will's Music" is a love story set in San Francisco and based in the world of classical radio and dance. I wanted to write a gentle, sweet and sentimental love story, and I think "Will's Music" came out exactly as I wanted. Those who have read "Will's Music" have been very much touched by the story.

OMC: Are you working on book number three?

OY: Currently I am working on my second novel -- my third book -- and expect to complete it by spring. I am also working on a fourth book. This will be a collection of essays and short stories that currently I write in my column "Musing With My Samovar" for Zinda, an online Assyrian magazine -- written in English -- that's read worldwide at zindamagazine.com.

As you may know, I am a full-blooded Assyrian (we're the Biblical people). These essays and short stories are slice-of-life pieces on the Assyrian world. When I have a fair collection of them in about a year or so, I will publish them in a book under the same name: "Musing With My Samovar." Zinda Magazine tells me the "Musing With My Samovar" column is a big hit with Assyrian readers worldwide.

OMC: As someone long involved in the music world, we'd be interested to know what you're listening to these days?

OY: The music I listened to these days is from my own CD collection of classical and jazz. In classical, I love Bach, Schumann and Brahms, among many others. In jazz, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson remain my favorites, among many others. In other words, I listen to just about everything in classical and jazz. I also love South American music, especially tangos from Argentina.

Zinda Magazine is pleased to announce its publication of Obie Yadgar's next book in 2008, a collection of "Musing with My Samovar" stories.  Mr. Yadgar's nostalgic stories continue to be among Zinda readers' most popularly section in each Zinda issue.  Don't miss this week's piece:  The Roomtah !