The famous voice of Abdel Halim Hafez

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StUMKEgqleM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXpQqBkIAyc

thank you, Faruk. I like the name Ercüment

What is the name of this group?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnzFwqNbIgk

Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist, Dr. Megalommatis, 51, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages. He refuted Greek nationalism, supported Martin Bernal´s Black Athena, and rejected the Greco-Romano-centric version of History. He pleaded for the European History by J. B. Duroselle, and defended the rights of the Turkish, Pomak, Macedonian, Vlachian, Arvanitic, Latin Catholic, and Jewish minorities of Greece. Born Christian Orthodox, he adhered to Islam when 36, devoted to ideas of Muhyieldin Ibn al Arabi.

Greek citizen of Turkish origin, Prof. Megalommatis studied and/or worked in Turkey, Greece, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Russia, and carried out research trips throughout the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and Central Asia. His career extended from Research & Education, Journalism, Publications, Photography, and Translation to Website Development, Human Rights Advocacy, Marketing, Sales & Brokerage. He traveled in more than 80 countries in 5 continents. He defends the Right of Aramaeans, Oromos, Ogadenis, Sidamas, Berbers, Afars, Anuak, Darfuris, Bejas, Balochs and Tibetans to National Independence, demands international recognition for Kosovo, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Transnistria, calls for National Unity in Somalia, and denounces Islamic Terrorism.

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/48609

A few recipes

http://www.yogurtland.com/

Do some devout Chinese say prayers before they eat? Some of my German and American friends do? I guess Turks don´t.

An extremely devout Muslim man’s beliefs are upset by temptation and the modern world, causing his fear of God to quickly eat away at his senses.

Muharrem has worked quietly as a simple clerk for over 30 years in the same traditional Istanbul neighborhood where he was born. The humble introvert lives a solitary and meager existence of prayer and sexual abstinence, adhering strictly to the most severe Islamic doctrines.

Muharrem’s extraordinary devotion attracts the attention of the leaders of a rich and powerful religious group. His acclaimed trustworthiness and conscientiousness inspire them to offer him an administrative post as rent collector for their numerous properties.

Provided with new clothes, a cell phone and a computer, Muharrem is thrown into the modern outside world he has successfully avoided for so long. His naive eyes are soon witness to conflict attitudes toward alcohol consumption and goodwill.

To his dismay, Muharrem becomes domineering and proud, eventually even inadvertently cheating in a business deal. To make matters worse, Muharrem’s inner peace is unnerved by the tormenting image of a seductive woman who tempts him in his dreams, both night and day.

Muharrem has built his life around being able to distinguish between carnal and spiritual values. But the balance of his devotion is now upset. His fear of God begins to eat away at his senses…


The cast:
ERKAN CAN [MUHARREM]

he is about 45. Immigrant from the Balkans. He is a naive and calm man. He lives in wooden house inheritated from his grandfather, alone since the loss of his mother, but yet attached to the rules of a family home. He works in an old khan, for Ali Bey who sell and buy sacks. He does all the work that does not need calculations. He is a follower of a tariqah organized in an old dergah. He is someone from before mass production and mass consumption. He doesn´t have any social relations apart of those needed for a practical life. In his existing social life, his behaviours are hierarchical. He has resolved the existence question with the idea of Allah and is devoted to the road shown. For this reason (we think that) he has expelled all relation with women from his life, but still needs sexuality. He has segmented the little life around him with the concepts of totally right and totally wrong, and has built his life on that. He wants to be a good man. He is obsessively attached to his ideas and to the sistem he has constructed.

A cultural exchange that benefited East and West
It´s difficult today to imagine Baghdad and Washington exchanging a court painter as part of a peace treaty. But in 1479, the resolution of a war between the Italian city-state of Venice and Sultan Mehmet II of Constantinople included such a provision. After losing a long and expensive struggle against the Ottoman Turks, the Venetians agreed to loan a top painter to the sultan. They chose Gentile Bellini.
Bellini came from a family of artists that included his father, Jacopo, and his younger brother, Giovanni. At age 50, he was at the height of his powers and popularity. He had been commissioned to paint murals for the Doge´s Palace (the seat of Venetian government), and it is likely that he was recommended for the Turkish job, or at least talked into taking the assignment, by a diplomat friend.

Bellini´s two years in the sultan´s service were marked by his close observation of this cosmopolitan city and its people. While very little of Bellini´s Venetian work remains, a tantalizing number of drawings and paintings from Constantinople (now Istanbul) survive. These works fill out the exhibition "Gentile Bellini and the East," at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.


This small, jewel-like exhibition tells not just about a neglected painter of the early Italian Renaissance, but also how cultural curiosity flourished throughout the Mediterranean. Even frequent territorial disputes could not dampen the cultural and trade exchanges that brought the artistry and wealth of the Near East into close contact with the virtuosity of Italian craftsmen.

Sultan Mehmet II was known for his fierceness in battle and for his sweeping ambition. But rulers bent on global domination also needed expertise in languages, religions, scholarship, statesmanship, and culture. From letters written by Italian diplomats, scholars have determined that Mehmet was a cultured man who appreciated the art of the Byzantine Empire he had so roughly overthrown. He greatly admired Christian devotional art, giving rise to rumors of his conversion. He even intervened to save Greek Byzantine mosaics in the Church of Hagia Sofia, now considered one of the most important monuments of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Instead of closing off Constantinople to Christians and Jews, Mehmet encouraged them to return and set up trade. He also brought in painters, sculptors, and metalworkers from Naples and Florence. Whatever skills the Italians had, Mehmet was determined to bring them into his court.

This spirit of curiosity ran both ways, with the Italians paying close attention to Islamic innovations, as demonstrated by several carved and inlaid brass containers featured in the exhibition, along with medals, textiles, and historic documents.

"We think of Islamic states as closed," says Alan Chong, co-curator of the exhibition, "but they really aren´t." He explains that Mehmet, like other rulers, looked to classical heroes for inspiration, even Western heroes such as Alexander the Great. Cultural exchange played an enormous role in satisfying those aspirations.

Bellini´s voyage to Constantinople must have been undertaken with some trepidation. It´s easy to wonder if he saw himself as a cultural ambassador or as the pawn in a huge international chess game. Whatever his thoughts, once he had arrived, he turned his discerning eye on the city with the zeal of an anthropologist. He made pen and ink drawings of people he encountered on the street, including one of a minutely observed drawing of a young Greek. On the drawing´s edges, he even noted the color and texture of her gown and veil. He drew scholars and soldiers in the Topkapi, the sultan´s palace, again making annotations for future use.

Mehmet, like most conquerors, enjoyed having his portrait done. The first such painting by Bellini in the exhibition is dated a year after his arrival, leaving scholars to muse that perhaps the sultan tested Bellini by demanding examples of other portraiture before he agreed to have his own made. It was not unusual for Muslim rulers to indulge in this popular Western fashion. The Koran is often assumed to forbid figurative art, but Mr. Chong says the Koran´s injunction is against images of the prophet Muhammad. Bellini´s portrait of Mehmet was considered an excellent likeness and was much copied. That, along with his other work, earned him a great reputation among the Turks.

Bellini must have had excellent access to the Ottoman court, with the exception of the women´s quarters. No images exist of Muslim women, not even veiled ones. However, he was able to delineate with remarkable intimacy the faces and garb of courtiers and others of the sultan´s household. One such stunning portrait is of a young man, "Seated Scribe," believed to be a page at Mehmet´s court. This work, in brown ink with watercolor and gold, shows Bellini´s complete mastery of the Islamic decorative technique and is the exhibition´s centerpiece. In this painting, the worlds of East and West mingle with a delicacy and harmony that modern viewers can only admire - and envy.

Christian Science Monitor

A Declaration of Independence From Israel

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war was over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.

The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.

Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israeli and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070702_a_declaration_of_independence_from_israel/

Six wounded in Jordan bus attack

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080717/wl_mideast_afp/jordanattackstourism_080717112417