Iran Politics Club Forum

[Liberator]

Life Saver
Dr. Jamshid Ghajar

http://www.iranianamericanpac.org/leadersh.../p_Ghajar.shtml

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in California, Iran, and England. As a freshman at UCLA, he started his investigations in the brain sciences at the Brain Research Institute, a field which he continued to focus on during his graduate studies. At Cornell University Medical College, he completed the MD/PhD program in neuroscience, specializing in brain metabolism and blood flow during coma.

While he was a resident in the neurosurgery program at New York Hospital, Dr. Ghajar invented several neurosurgical devices that are currently used worldwide. After residency, he joined the faculty and staff at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and founded the Brain Trauma Research Laboratory and the Brain Trauma Foundation (formerly Aitken Neuroscience Center).

Dr. Ghajar currently spends a part of his time as President of the nonprofit foundation, developing and implementing scientific guidelines for treating head injuries. He is also Chief of Neurosurgery at New York's Jamaica Hospital - Cornell Trauma Center, and is a practicing neurosurgeon at New York Hospital. He directs several clinical grants including the Soros Head Injury Initiative in Central and Eastern Europe and the Guidelines for Pre-hospital Management of Traumatic Brain Injury funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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Dr. Jamshid Ghahremani Ghajar featured in The New Yorker.






http://www.iranian.com/July96/Articles/Jam...d/Jamshid1.html


From Conquering the Coma by Malcolm Gladwell in the July 8, 1996, issue of The New Yorker magazine.


On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 4th, a young woman was taken by ambulance from Central Park to New York Hospital, on the Upper East Side. When she arrived in the emergency room, around four o'clock, she was in a coma, and she had no identification.

Her head was, in the words of one physician, "the size of a pumpkin." She was bleeding from her nose and her left ear. Her right eye was swollen shut, and the bones above the eye were broken and covered by a black-and-blue bruise. Within minutes, she was put on a ventilator and then given X-rays and a CAT scan. A small hole was drilled in her skull and a slender silicone catheter inserted, to drain the pressure steadily building in her brain.

At midnight, after that pressure had risen precipitously, a neurosurgeon removed a blood clot from her right frontal cortex. A few hours later, Urgent Four -- as the trauma-unit staff named her, because she was the fourth unidentified trauma patient in the hospital at that time -- was wheeled from the operating room to an intensive-care bed overlooking the East River.

Urgent Four -- or the Central Park victim, as she became known during the spate of media attention that surrounded her case -- came close to dying on two occasions. Each time she fought back. On Wednesday, June 12th, eight days after entering the hospital, she opened one blue eye. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, was paying one of his daily visits to her room at the time, and she looked directly at him.

Several days later, she began tracking people with her one good eye as they came in and out of her room. She began to frown and smile. On June 12th, the neurosurgeon supervising her care leaned over her bed, pinched her to get her attention, and asked, "Can you open your mouth?" She opened her mouth. He said, "Is your name ----?" She nodded and mouthed her name.

There is something compelling about such stories of medical recovery, and something undeniably moving about a young woman fighting back from the most devastating injuries. In the days following the Central Park beating, the case assumed national proportions as the police frantically worked to locate Urgent Four's family and identify her attacker.

The victim turned out to be a talented musician, a piano teacher beloved by her students. her alleged assailant turned out to be a strange and deeply disturbed unemployed salesclerk, who veered off into Eastern mysticism during his interrogation by the police.

The story also had a hero, In Jam [Jamshid Ghahremani] Ghajar, the man who saved her life: a young and handsome neurosurgeon with an M.D. and a Ph.D., a descendant of Iranian royalty, who has an athlete's walk, strong, beautiful hands, and ten medical-device patents to his name. If this were the movies, Ghajar would be played by Andy Garcia.

Ghajar is, at forty-four, one of the country's leading neuro-trauma specialists. On his father's side, he is descended from the family that ruled Persia from the late seventeen hundreds until 1925, and his grandfather on his mother's side was the Shah of Iran's personal physician.

Neurosurgeons, Ghajar says, are "overachievers," and the description fits him perfectly. As a seventeen-year-old, he was a volunteer at the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a seventeen-year resident of New York Hospital, he invented a device -- a tiny tripod to guide the insertion of ventricular catheters -- that made the cover of the Journal of Neurosurgery.

Today, Ghajar is the chief of neurosurgery at Jamaica Hospital, in Queens. He is also the president of the Aitken Neuroscience Institute, in Manhattan, a research group that grew out of the double tragedy experienced by the children of Sunny von Bülow, who lost not only his mother to coma but also their father, Prince Alfred von Auersperg, after a car accident, thirteen years ago.

Most days, Ghajar drives back and fourth between the hospital and the institute, juggling his research at Aitken, with a clinical schedule that keeps him on call two weeks out of every four. "Jam is completely committed -- he's got a razor-sharp focus," Sunny von Bülow's daughter, Ala Isham, told me. "He's godfather to my son. I always joke that we would carry little cards in our wallets saying that if anything happens to us call Jam Ghajar."

Ghajar spent all day Tuesday, June 4th, at Jamaica Hospital. In the evening, he returned to the Aitken Neuroscience Institute, where a colleague, Michael Lavyne, told him of the young woman hovering near death across the street at New York Hospital.

At seven o'clock, Ghajar left his office for the hospital. Two hours later, with Urgent Four's ICP at dangerous levels, he ordered a second CAT scan, which immediately identified the culprit: the bruise on her right frontal cortex had given rise to a massive clot. At midnight, Ghajar drilled a small hole in her skull, cut out a chunk three inches in diameter with a zip saw, and, he said, "this big brain hemorrhage just came out -- plop -- like a big piece of black jelly."

Had Urgent Four been taken to a smaller hospital, or to any of the thousands of trauma centers in America which do not specialize in brain injuries, the chances are that she would have been dead by the time any of her family arrived.

This is what trauma experts who are familiar with the case believe, and, of the many lessons the Central Park beating, it is the one that is hardest to understand. It's not, after all, as if Urgent Four were suffering from a rare and difficult brain tumor. Brain trauma is the leading cause of death due to injury for Americans under forty-five, and results in the death of some sixty thousand people every year.

Nor is it as if Urgent Four had been given some kind of daring experimental therapy, available only at the most exclusive research hospitals. The insertion of the ventricular catheter is something that all neurosurgeons are taught to do in their first year of residency. CAT scanners are in every hospital. The removal of Urgent Four's blood clots was straightforward neurosurgery. The raising and monitoring of blood pressure are taught in Nursing 101.

Urgent Four was treated according to standards and protocols that have been discussed in the medical literature, outlined at conferences, and backed by every expert in the field. Yet the fact is that if she had been taken to a smaller hospital or to any one of the thousands of trauma centers in American which do not specialize in brain injuries she would have been treated very differently.

When Ghajar and five other researchers surveyed the country's trauma centers five years ago, they found that seventy-nine percent of the coma patients were routinely given steroids, despite the fact that steroids have been shown repeatedly to be of no use -- and possibly of some harm -- in reducing intracranial pressure.

Ninety-five percent of the centers surveyed were relying as well on hyperventilation, in which a patient is made to breath more rapidly to reduce swelling -- a technique that specialists like Ghajar will use only as a last resort. The most troubling finding, however, was that only a third of the trauma centers surveyed said that they routinely monitored ICP at all.

Most neurosurgeons make their living doing disk surgery and removing brain tumors. Trauma is an afterthought. It doesn't pay particularly well, because many car-accident and shooting victims don't have insurance. (Urgent Four herself was without insurance, and a public collection has been made to help defray her medical expenses.)

Nor does it pose any kind of medical challenge that, say, an aneurysm or a tumor does. "It's something like -- well, you've got mashed-up brains, and someone got hit by a car, and it's not really very interesting," Ghajar says. "But brain tumors are kind of interesting. What's happening with the DNA? Why does a tumor develop?"

Then, there are the hours, long and unpredictable, tied to the rhythms of street thugs and drunk drivers. Ghajar, for example, routinely works through the night. he practices primarily out of Jamaica Hospital, not the far more prestigious New York Hospital, because Jamaica gets serious brain-trauma cases every second day and New York might get one only every second week.

"If I were operating and doing disks and brain tumors, I'd be making ten times as much," he says. In the entire country, there are no more than two dozen neurosurgeons who, like Ghajar, exclusively focus on researching and treating brain trauma.

Ghajar says that in talking to other neurosurgeons he sensed a certain resignation in treating brain surgery -- a feeling that the prognosis facing coma patients was so poor that the neurosurgeon's role was limited.

"It was just that there was so much information out there that it was confusing. When they got young people in comas, half of the patients would die. And the half that lived would be severely disabled, so the neurosurgeon is saying, 'What am I doing for these people? Am I saving vegetables?' And that was honestly the feeling that neurosurgeons had, because the methods they were trained in and were using would produce that kind of result."

Three years ago, after a neurosurgery meeting in Vancouver, Ghajar -- along with Randall Chesnut and Donald W. Marion, a brain-trauma specialist at the University of Pittsburgh -- decided to act. For help they turned to the Brain Trauma Foundation, which is the education arm of the brain-trauma institute started by Sunny von Bülow's children.

The foundation gathered some of the world's top brain injury specialists together for eleven-meetings between the winter of 1994 and last summer. Four thousand scientific papers covering fourteen aspects of brain-injury management were reviewed. In March of this year, the group produced a book -- a blue three-ring binder with fifteen bright-colored chapter tabs -- laying out the scientific evidence and state-of-the-art treatment in every phase of brain-trauma care.

The guidelines represent the first successful attempt by the neurosurgery community to come up with a standard treatment protocol, and if they are adopted by anything close to a majority of the country's trauma centers, they could save more than ten thousand lives a year. A copy has now been sent to every neurosurgeon in the country.

In his first week back on call after the Urgent Four case, Ghajar saw three new coma patients. The latest was a thirty-year-old man who had barely survived a serious car accident. He was in worse shape than Urgent Four had been with a hemorrhage on top of his brain.

He was admitted to Jamaica Hospital on Monday at 11 P.M., and Ghajar operated from midnight to 6 A.M. He inserted a catheter in the patient's skull to drain the spinal fluid and monitored his blood pressure, to make sure it was seventy points higher than his ICP. Then, that evening -- fourteen hours later -- the patient's condition worsened. "I had to go back in and take out the hemorrhage," Ghajar said, and there was a note of exhaustion in his voice. He left the hospital at one o'clock Wednesday morning.

"People want to personalize this," Ghajar said. He was on Seventy-second Street, outside his office, walking back to New York Hospital to visit Urgent Four. "I guess that's human nature. They want to say 'It's Dr. Ghajar's protocol. He's a wonderful doctor.' But that's not it. These are standards developed according to the best available science. These are standards that everyone can use."
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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

Pierre Omidyar
Founder and Chairman of the Board, eBay

http://pages.ebay.com/aboutebay/thecompany...cutiveteam.html






As founder and chairman of eBay, Pierre Omidyar changed the face of Internet commerce in 1995 when he launched eBay to experiment how equal access to information and opportunities would affect the efficiency of a marketplace. Ten years later, his experiment continues to prove the benefits of a level playing field: hundreds of thousands of members make their living entirely on eBay, more than 150 million people trust strangers with every transaction, and people find common ground where none seemed to exist before.

When Pierre launched eBay as a hobby, his "day job" was conducting developer relations for General Magic. Prior to General Magic, he co-founded Ink Development Corp., which was renamed eShop and acquired by Microsoft. His career began in the software engineering business as a developer for Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, where he worked on consumer applications.

Today, Pierre is CEO of Omidyar Network, a mission-based investment group he established with his wife, Pam, in June 2004. Omidyar Network is committed to fostering individual self-empowerment across the economic, political and social realms. The Network funds for-profits, nonprofits and public policy efforts that promote level playing fields, collaboration, and rich connections around shared interests to enable individuals to pursue what matters most to them.

In addition to his roles with eBay and Omidyar Network, Pierre serves as a Trustee of Tufts University and Santa Fe Institute, and a Director of Meetup Inc.

Pierre graduated from Tufts University in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science in computer science.
_________________
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

Miss World Canada 2005 - Ramona Rina AMIRI
http://www.missworldcanada.com/





* Voting Number: MW504
* Age: 24
* Occupation: Medical Research Assistant
* Height: 172


Ramona was born and grew up in Montreal, the second largest city in Canada and the largest French-speaking country in the Americas, she moved to Vancouver in 1997 to attend University. Canada is a land of true diversity; it is multicultural, has breathtaking scenery from the Rocky Mountains to the Prairies, to the ocean scenery of the Maritimes & Atlantic Ocean to the far north touching on the Arctic Ocean. Graduating university with an Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology, she is currently working as a Medical Research Assistant and enjoying being Miss Canada, her ambition is to continue working with her children’s fund while completing medical school to become a Doctor. Hobbies are: Belly Dancing and modern dance, cooking, reading, piano, and riding her motorcycle! Sporting interests are: Ice hockey, volleyball, badminton, swimming, roller blading and hiking. Ramona is half-Assyrian from her father’s side of the family and is proud to speak the language. Her personal motto is “Work like you don’t need money, Love like you’ve never been hurt, and Dance like no one’s watching”.



Interview:

[Liberator]

Miss World Canada 2003: Nazanin Afshin-Jam
http://www.nazaninafshinjam.com/

[AhreemanX]

Iranians in NFL
(National Football League)


NFL
http://www.nfl.com



Talking about Iranian Celebrities! Hee Hee Hee, forget about Iranian Models, CEOs, Doctors, Scientists and Industrialists, thus we have plenty of them around, nothing new! Iranians have many selected brains, yet unfortunately the majority work outside Iran (Escape of the Brains)! With an Islamic Bang O Salavat or Rish O Pashm government, can you blame them?!

Thanks to Iranians, United States of America is blooming in the fields of Space Research, Hi-Tech, Medicine, Defense, Industry, Business and Engineering! Mullahs must be idiots to provide such an environment for all the top brains to escape to the west! So we have no shortage of Iranian celebrities in the west, but lets talk sports. Now if an Iranian makes it in Football (WAR on the Field), then that is called achievement! That is called Rare! That is admirable! Lets talk Football!

Steelers Fans
That's What I'm Talking About!




As you know my interest is Football. I am a retired football player. I played defense (Inside Line-Backer) @ college, local and Semi Pro levels. I love Football. The Football Field is the only place where you can legally hit and hurt people without getting arrested or go to jail! Many are mistakenly naming Christianity as religion of America, yet the fact is that Sex and Violence are America's official religion! For God's sake, our national game is Football & the game is practicaly WAR on the Field! It is the fullest of the Full Contact team sports! It is a Battle, where many get hit, injured, crippled and even die! Remember all the Detroit Lions players who got injured, crippled & died?! Damn I love violence! The only element better than sex is violence, & what better place than the football field?! What a rush indeed!

Raiders Fans!
That A boy, Perfect Canibals!




So without further due, lets check out some real Iranian Celebrities, cause Real Men play Football! Lets roll:
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Touraj Houshmandzadeh


Bengals
http://www.bengals.com






# 84 T.J. Houshmandzadeh
Full Name: Touraj Houshmandzadeh
Position: Wide Receiver
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 197 lbs
Born: September 26, 1977
College: Oregon State
NFL Experience: 5
Status: Active

Touraj Houshmandzadeh, Jr. or simply T.J. (born September 26, 1977 in Victorville, California) is an American football wide receiver for the National Football League's Cincinnati Bengals. He was a seventh-round pick in the 2001 NFL draft by the Bengals.

Houshmandzadeh was a high school dropout who later earned his GED and enrolled at a junior college where he helped his team win two national championships. Believing he was too tall to play running back, he moved to receiver. Based on his junior college performance, Houshmandzadeh was offered a scholarship at Oregon State, where he and current Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson were teammates.

Houshmandzadeh missed almost all of the 2003 season with a severe hamstring injury. In 2003 he was listed as the team's third receiver. However, in 2004, Bengals receiver Peter Warrick went down with an injury and Houshmandzadeh was promoted to the #2 receiver spot for the first time in his career. He took full advantage of his opportunity to prove himself, recording 73 receptions for 978 yards and 4 touchdowns while also adding another 51 yards on the ground with 6 carries, mostly on on wide receiver reverse plays. With the release of the troubled Warrick during the 2005 training camp (he would later sign with the Seattle Seahawks,) T.J. Houshmandzadeh was promoted to the starting lineup. He is viewed as one of the reasons for the Bengals' resurgence and was rewarded by the Bengals' organization with a 5-year, $13 million contract and an undisclosed bonus.

Questions about Houshmandzadeh's speed arose in 2002, and that led to him slimming down to his current playing weight of 200 pounds, which increased his on-field performance markedly. T.J. Houshmandzadeh is a "possession" receiver (football parlance for a receiver who's not a particularly fast runner), and has been called one of the NFL's most underrated players by some broadcasters.

T.J. Houshmandzadeh is of mixed ancestry — Persian and African American. He is named after his father, a native Iranian, who left his family and returned to Iran in the mid-1980's. Houshmandzadeh says he recalls nothing of his biological father and knows only what he looks like from photographs. Despite being raised by his mother, he took on his father's surname rather than his mother's, which, ironically is "Johnson," which is a common surname on the Bengals team, shared by running backs Rudi and Jeremi, receiver Chad, and linebacker Landon.

In the offseason, Houshmandzadeh resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Kaci, and his two daughters, Karrington (5) and Kennedi (3). Although he tends to keep his faith private, Houshmandzadeh has mentioned that he is a Christian

Almost every time there would be a conflict between the United States and an Arab nation, Touraj Houshmandzadeh knew what was coming:

''Tell your Uncle Saddam to quit trippin'. Tell your "people' to quit trippin,'' he said they would say.

And Houshmandzadeh, the son of an Iranian father and an African American mother, would just laugh. After all, it was usually the friends of the Bengals rookie wideout who would be making the gags. The 6-foot-1 receiver would grin, shrug, maybe give a playful shove in return.

But what about now?

What about people incensed over the terrorist attacks that killed thousands Tuesday in New York City and Washington, D.C., attacks that appeared to have some Arabic connection? What about people who see the pony-tailed wide receiver and jump to the wrong conclusion?

''Do I care? No. Do I worry? No,'' Houshmandzadeh said after Thursday afternoon's practice at Paul Brown Stadium.

''All that stuff seems unreal to me. Like it's coming out of a movie or something. I don't know. I never really thought about it. I've seen how certain people were calling people of ethnicity, calling their homes and calling their businesses, and threatening them (after the bombing). But it never really dawned on me if someone did it to me.

''I mean, I don't consider myself an (Iranian-American). I wasn't brought up, really, being a part of that. As far as me, I don't care. I can handle it. It's a part of me, but it never really was a part of me.''

In fact, about the only Iranian element Houshmandzadeh, who prefers to go by T.J., still has in his life is his name.

He took both the first and last parts from his birth father, a father he has never really known. Touraj Sr. met T.J.'s mother, Deborah Johnson, at San Diego State University. T.J. was born in September 1977. Touraj Sr. wanted to marry Deborah, she later told her son, but he also wanted to move the family to Iran. When she declined, Touraj left. T.J. hasn't seen him since he was at least 2 years old. Maybe younger.

''I don't remember actually seeing him or meeting him at all,'' said T.J., the Bengals' seventh-round draft pick out of Oregon State. ''I've seen pictures, but I . . . never have been in touch with him in person.''

Houshmandzadeh was raised in Southern California; he grew up in Barstow considering himself black. And a Christian.

''Growing up, everybody thought of me as black,'' Houshmandzadeh said. ''Then they'd look at my last name and I'd tell them (the origins of it). I carried myself as if I were black.''

T.J. was as shaken as any of the Bengals in the wake of Tuesday's tragedy. Houshmandzadeh had hoped to fly to California sometime in the next two weeks to visit his baby daughter but is wary of airline security.

''I know I don't want to fly anytime soon, I'll tell you that,'" he said. ''Security is going to be real beefed up, I guess, but you can't monitor everything that goes on.''

Houshmandzadeh admitted that recent events might even force him to think twice about meeting others who are of Arabic descent.

''Before, I don't think you would even (be suspicious) at all. You wouldn't think, "What is he going to do?' '' T.J. said. ''But maybe now you might.''
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Ali Haji-Sheikh


Redskins
http://www.redskins.com/




Ali Haji-Sheikh
Position: Kicker
Status: Retired
Teams:
Giants, Falcons, Redskins

November 7, 1983 Ali Haji-Sheikh kicks his 2nd New York Giant record 56 yard field goal
Played for:
1983 New York Giants
1984 New York Giants
1985 New York Giants
1986 Atlanta Falcons
1987 Washington Redskins
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Shahriar Pourdanesh


Steelers
http://media3.steelers.com






# 99 Shar Pourdanesh
Full Name: Shahriar Pourdanesh
Position: Offensive Tackle
Height: 6' 6"
Weight: 312 lbs
Born: July 19, 1972 Teheran, Iran
College: Nevada
NFL Experience: 6 years
Status: Retired
Teams:
1996 - 2000 Washington Redskins
2001 - 2002 Pittsburgh Steelers

Shahriar Pourdanesh
Offensive Lineman,
Washington Redskins / Pittsburgh Steelers
Shar Pourdanesh had a normal childhood in Teheran, Iran, in the late 1970s.

As normal a childhood, that is, as one could have in a nation that was imploding.

He rode his bike and his skateboard. He played video games. He also obeyed martial law because he saw the bodies of those who didn't. He saw the riots. He saw the fear on his parents' faces.

At 6-foot-4, 326 pounds, he almost certainly will make it as a left offensive tackle for the Washington Redskins and the NFL's first native Iranian.

He has become one of the most popular players on the team. The other night, players began chanting ``Shar ... Shar ... Shar,'' the unofficial call for rookies to stand and sing their alma mater.

Reluctantly, Pourdanesh stood, then told the team he would sing the Russian national anthem instead. Pourdanesh uttered some gibberish, but did it with such gusto that his teammates loved it. He speaks three languages. Who knew Russian wasn't one of them?

``He's a fun-loving guy,'' quarterback Gus Frerotte says. ``The guys have really taken to him.''

And he to them. But Pourdanesh clearly remembers his roots and the pain that came with being of Iranian descent.

His family left Teheran when he was 9. Now 26, he hasn't seen nearly 40 of his relatives since.

His two sisters arrived in California in 1979 to attend Catholic school. He, his father and mother hopscotched through Europe for 3 1/2 years before getting visas to join them in the United States.

But leaving Iran behind was no simple task. Once, Pourdanesh was leaving a building in Hamburg, Germany, on a holiday similar to our 4th of July. When he heard fireworks, Pourdanesh threw himself to the ground, hands covering his head, reflexively quaking at what might come next.

``The worst part was that I knew they were firecrackers,'' he says, ``and this was a year after I had left Iran. I thought, `Boy, am I really messed up.' ''

In 1983, the family arrived in Costa Mesa, Calif. Pourdanesh, who was in the eighth grade, barely spoke English. Changing classes one day, a student bumped into him. Instead of apologizing, he asked Pourdanesh if he was from Iran. Pourdanesh said yes and ducked an instant before his face was used for a punching bag.

Daily for the next couple of years, Pourdanesh says, kids challenged him to fight.

``I had so much pride I'd tell myself I couldn't back down,'' Pourdanesh said. ``I'd get one guy, then his older brother would come up with his friends and we'd go. I finally developed a plan. I'd go right at the biggest guy. The others would join in, but I figured if I had the biggest guy in my hands, there wasn't much the rest would do.

``One time, there were three of them, and one guy stripped the cover off an umbrella. I was on the ground with the biggest guy, rolling, and this guy with the umbrella would whip that at my head.

``It was like, `punch, punch, duck . . . punch, punch, duck.' I developed a pretty good sense of timing.''

From eighth grade until his sophomore year in high school, Pourdanesh had no friends, just bitter, faceless enemies. Sometimes, teachers would escort him between classes for protection. Sometimes, they just let him go. When school administrators did anything, he says, they suspended him for fighting.

``I've never disliked this country. I did dislike the people who were doing that to me, because they didn't know me,'' he says of his classmates.

Pourdanesh never asked his parents to leave America because ``you don't go through four years of living in hotels, then leave a country that offers what this one does.''

In middle school, Pourdanesh stood 5-9. As a high school sophomore in Irvine, Calif., however, he was 6-4, 180 pounds and an excellent wrestler. He went to the weight room one day and asked the attendant if he could join a friend who was pumping iron.

``Turns out he was the football coach,'' Pourdanesh says, laughing. ``He suddenly put his arm around me and began telling me that I should play football for him. I could get a college scholarship. I could someday sign a big professional contract. It was all bull.''

Except that it came true.

Pourdanesh had two college scholarship offers for wrestling and one for football - from Nevada-Reno. In wrestling, his father reminded him, the Olympics were the end of the line. In football, there was the NFL.

Only it wasn't that easy.

After college, Pourdanesh had a tryout with the Cleveland Browns, but was cut. He went back to Reno, finished his degree and figured he was done with football.

That was fine. He missed his Reno friends too much to devote his life to a game.

Then he watched a friend on the Browns play ``and I said, `Oh my God, what have you done?' It was the first time I realized how much I loved football, that I wanted to have a career.''

An opposing coach he knew from college had just accepted a job as offensive line coach for the Canadian Football League's Baltimore franchise. He saw Pourdanesh's name on the waiver wire and called.

``He told me, `You stay here two years and they'll be begging for you back in the NFL,' '' Pourdanesh said.

He was right. Pourdanesh was All-CFL two straight years and the league's lineman of the year in '94.

The Redskins found him when they saw he was in Washington to process papers to play for the London Monarchs of the WLAF. They asked him to come by Redskin Park before he left the country. Tight ends coach Russ Grimm gave him a workout. Pourdanesh never made it to the airport.

``I really like him, but you're always concerned about a lineman until you see him perform in pads,'' offensive line coach Jim Hanifan said. ``He's held up his end. He's got a tremendous work ethic, is very smart and coachable and he's some kind of tough. He's an excellent prospect.''

Pourdanesh is closing the gap behind starter Joe Patton. He soon could win the job as starting left tackle. At worst, he's the first sub.

``Sure, I think I'm living a dream,'' he says. ``Two years ago, I thought I was out of football for sure. Now, I'm getting paid to do something I love. God willing, for this season and many more to come, I'll get paid for having fun.''

Shahriar Pourdanesh (known as Shar Pourdanesh to his many Redskin fans), was born in Iran. He came to the United States with his family after leaving Iran during the Iranian revolution in 1979. He attended University High School in Irvine, California where he was an all-league offensive lineman and was the fourth-ranked heavyweight wrestler in the state. He attended college at the University of Nevada in Reno where he was a dominant offensive lineman. As a senior in 1992, he was named to the first team All-Conference for the Big West Conference.

Shar joined the Redskins after two seasons with the Baltimore Stallions of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and is the first Iranian to play NFL football. In 1994 Shar was named CFL Offensive Lineman of the Year for the Baltimore Stallions and was named to the CFL all-star team in 1994 and 1995. During the 1996 Redskins' season Shar proved a very versatile player, playing both left tackle and right tackle.

Pourdanesh played some solid games for Steelers (2001-2002) and retired a Pittsburgh Steeler.
_____________________

Go Football


_________________
Watcher in the woods

[Liberator]

Rudi Bakhtiar




Rudi BakthiarRudi Bakhtiar (born June 21, 1966 in Fresno, California) (born Rudabeh Bakhtiar, in Persian:رودابه بختیار) is an Iranian-American journalist

Although born in California, Bakhtiar was raised in Iran until the revolution when her family moved to the United States. She attended University of California, Los Angeles, where she received a B.S. in biology, planning to be a doctor.

Bakhtiar joined CNN in 1996 as a co-anchor of CNN Student News, the 30-minute commercial free news and features program designed specifically for use in the classroom. She provided multiple reports while on assignment from numerous countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mali. She was on the air live on CNN Headline News on September 11, 2001 when the terrorist attacks of that day began.

In 2002, Bakhtiar received the Iranian American Republican Council Achievement Award.

In 2005, after moving from CNN Headline News to CNN/U.S. to be a correspondent on the program Anderson Cooper 360, Bakhtiar left CNN to pursue other career interests and deal with family health issues.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

The Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute was founded in 2000 by
Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar.

Dr. Mir-Djalali holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Sorbonne as well as two Master's degrees, one from the Sorbonne and the other from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Mir-Djalali's post-doctoral work has been in cross-cultural research and in the fields of language teaching methodology and Persian Studies. She taught Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley between 1992 and 2000 and has extensive experience as an educator, research director and cross-cultural expert.


Board of Directors

Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar, Ph.D., President and CEO

http://www.roshan-institute.org/site/roshani/section.php?id=9075
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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

Iranian Oral History Project | Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies






Habib Ladjevardi
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iohp/director/

ladjevar@fas.harvard.edu Habib Ladjevardi has been director of the Iranian Oral History Project at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies since 1981 and chair of the editorial board of the Harvard Middle Eastern Monograph Series since 1990. Born in Tehran, he grew up in Scarsdale, New York, and received his B.S. from Yale University, M.B.A. from Harvard University, and Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. Dr. Ladjevardi returned to Iran in 1963 to work in his family's business, the Behshahr Industrial Group, where he was one of the managing directors. He was the principal founder of the Iran Center for Management Studies in Tehran (established in 1970 in cooperation with members of the faculty of the Harvard Business School), where he taught Public Policy until 1978. He also served on a number of boards and councils in the private and public sectors. Dr. Ladjevardi is the author of Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985).
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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

http://amirfashion.com/Today.html

Amir believes nothing says more about his designs than his creations themselves.
Take a look at a small sample of his latest designs for Ties, Shirts, and different Accessories.






http://amirfashion.com/history.html

For the past 25 years Amir has brought the concept of Understated Elegance to life through his designs. Attention to detail in design, tasteful creation of the finest fabrics in the world, and exquisite workmanship have always been the cornerstones of his vision. His clients have all come to expect the absolute best in whatever he does. He has been a trendsetter in his designs as well as his presentations. Amir was probably the first major designer to use Billboards on a large scale to showcase his creations.




Amir's show room in Bel Air (1975).




Amir in his factory, Florence (1979).




In 1984 Amir was appointed to design for Mayor Tom Bradley for the Summer Olympic Games held in Los Angeles.







_________________
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

Essex cricketer Ronald Charles "Ronnie" Irani (born 26 October 1971 in Leigh, Lancashire) is an British Asian cricketer of Irani Zoroastrian descent >>> Wikipedia




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Irani
_________________
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[AhreemanX]

Rudi Bakhtiar has moved to FOX

For your information, Rudi Bakhtiar has moved from CNN (Clintons News Network) to FOX, a Real News Station! She is getting trained and practicing to transform from an Anchor to a Reporter Correspondent.

In returns, FOX sends its rejects to CNN (Paula Zahn)!
Now she performs her program in CNN, looking like she just got out of bed!

Liberal Bimbos who receive gifts from Islamic Republic of Iran officials to portray a civilized Islamic Iran, also remain in CNN (Christiane Amanpour)!

Any professional talented journalist with semi looks who knows how to dress up, moves to FOX NEWS NETWORK!
FOX, Fair and Balanced News

Foxes move to FOX,
Left Overs and Rejects remain in CNN!




















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Watcher in the woods

[Liberator]

Russia Sends Iranian Female into Orbit
Space Tourism
by Konstantin Lantratov

http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=530&id=671554




The Russian Federal Space Agency officially announced that Iranian born Anoushe Ansari would travel in space on the Soyuz aircraft next spring. It is not an official Russian-Iranian flight, since Ms. Ansari, a U.S. citizen, is to fund the flight on her own to become the first female space tourist. The Ansari family is also well known for investing in space tourism projects.




Alexey Krasnov, the head of the Federal Space Agency’s department for pilot programs, said on Friday that Anoushe Ansari, the ethnic Iranian U.S. citizen, is to become an alternate for Japan’s Daisuke Enomoto who is to set to fly to the International Space Station this fall on the Russian Soyuz. “We have signed a pre-contract agreement with Ansari. She is considered an alternate for the Japanese cosmonaut,” Mr. Krasnov said. “Besides that, Ansari is to travel on the Soyuz as an unprofessional participant of the flight, scheduled for spring 2007.” The representative of the Russian space agency explained that there are now two candidates for this flight – Ms. Ansari and Microsoft’s former employee, Charles Simonyi. However, Mr. Simonyi’s plans may change due to “some recent developments, related to his business.” “Therefore Ansari has better chances to set off in spring 2007. She underwent medical tests in February and was declared fit for the flight,” Alexey Krasnov concluded.

Anoushe Ansari was born in 1967 in Teheran. Her family immigrated to the United States after the Islamic Revolution. Ms. Ansari, her husband Hamid and his brother Amir founded Telecom Technologies in the U.S. to produce telecommunication equipment. The business brought multi-million revenues to the family. After Telecom Technologies merged with Sonus Netword in 2000, the Ansaris set up Prodea Inc., an investment firm. The family has heavily invested in space tourism for a few years. Prodea became the major sponsor of the X-Prize in 2004, contributing $10 million for the contest to build the first private suborbital space flight. After the donation, the contest was renamed to Ansari X-Prize. Mojave Aerospace Ventures won the prize in October 2004 after its SpaceShipOne spacecraft had gone twice to the height of over 100 km over two weeks.

Space Adventures, which has lately in charge with flights of space tourists on Russian Soyuz’s, signed an agreement with Prodea in February to finance the construction of Explorer suborbital spacecrafts at the Myasishchev factory in Russia. Space Adventures and Prodea also agreed to use airdromes in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arabic Emirates, and in Singapore for suborbital launches of Explorers. The third airdrome will be found in the United States. Investments in the revamping of the airdromes and the organization of suborbital spacecrafts’ flights may cost about $0.5 billion. The market of suborbital tourist flights is worth of $1 billion annually, according to Space Adventures’s early estimates.

A source of Kommersant at the Russian Space Agency reported that Anoushe Ansari discussed her possible space flight with Space Adventures at the signing of the agreement. Ms. Ansari preferred not to fly on a suborbital spacecraft, where weightlessness lasts only ten minutes, but opted for the Soyuz whose the flight is eight-day-long. The source said that Space Adventures abandoned its commission given Ms. Ansari’s big investment in the company’s projects. Thus, Anoushe Ansari will pay $20 million for her flight on the Soyuz to the Russian party only.



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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[whatmeworry?]

An Iranian American from Detroit, Michigan, Safavian graduated fifth in his class at Detroit College of Law. In Michigan, he served as an aide to Michigan House Representatives Robert Davis (R) and Bill Schuette (R), and still later he worked for Janus-Merritt Strategies.

Safavian was a longtime friend of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In the mid-1990s, the two worked at the Washington-based lobbying firm of Preston Gates & Ellis. There they brought in millions to the firm while working on the Mississippi Choctaw tribal account. The pair were members of a team, reports CNN, “that was lobbying to keep the Northern Mariana Islands [a US territory] free from certain US labor and immigration laws.”

In 1997, Safavian and Grover Norquist founded a lobbying firm, the Merritt Group, which was renamed Janus-Merritt Strategies (and is sometimes referred to as "Janus Merritt" or simply "Janus"). The tenor of the firm was fiercely ideological. "We represent clients who really do have an interest in a smaller federal government," Safavian told Legal Times in a 1997 interview. "We're all very ideologically driven, and have a bias in favor of free markets." He went on: "We're not letting people who offer us money change our principles."

In early 2002, Safavian began looking for a new job. On February 4, 2002, he sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff his resume, receiving a very positive reponse five days later. In mid-April, Safavian interviewed at Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed Abramoff. Soon after that he got an offer for a job at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). On April 30, he wrote to Abramoff: "my gut is telling me to take the GSA job before joining up with you and your band of merry men." [4]

On May 16, 2002, GSA Administrator Stephen A. Perry named Safavian as Senior Advisor and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff at the GSA. Two months later, Safavian was named Chief of Staff of the GSA to replace Brian Allan Jackson, who was leaving the agency to pursue an MBA from Harvard Business School.

On November 4th, 2003, President George W. Bush announced Safavian's nomination to be the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. [

David Safavian was indicted October 5, 2005. He is accused of making false statements and obstructing investigations into his dealings with Jack Abramoff while he was chief of staff for the General Services Administration.

On January 27, 2006, Safavian filed a motion to dismiss the case and a motion to unseal the transcript of the grand jury session that indicted him. There was a hearing on pretrial motions on March 24. The trial date is set for May 22, 2006. [6]

Safavian's indictment refers, among other things, to an August 2002 golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland involving Jack Abramoff, House Republicans Bob Ney and Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, and former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed.

In short, the allegations are that: (a) it was illegal to accept that trip (because Abramoff had dealings with GSA at the time), (b) Safavian lied about the trip, and provided false documentation, thereby obstructing both Senate and executive branch investigations into the matter; and (c) that he concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area.

The indictment acknowledges that prior to departure, David Safavian wrote a check for $3,100, which is the identical amount listed on Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) Congressional travel papers (note: Congressional travel is not constrained by a dollar limitation). Executive branch ethics rules do not require agency officials to ask premission to take personal travel on personal time, so long as the federal official is paying his own way for the cost of the trip.

According to the indictment, Safavian wrote to the GSA ethics attorney because he wanted to know whether or not he had the option of accepting the airfare as a gift from a personal friend. In his email to the GSA attorney, Safavian states that he has already decided that he will be covering all other associated travel cost (i.e. meals, lodging, and greens fees). Despite that the response stated that it would be acceptable for him to accept the airfare as a gift, Safavian decided to pay his own way for the trip. In addition, he took leave without pay, rather than paid vacation for the time he was on travel.

The full text of the indictment is at http://www.ragingblog.com/files/safavian.indictment.pdf.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, have returned campaign donations that they received from Safavian.

[/img]

[Liberator]

Bijan Khadem-Missagh, soloist and conductor of the Tonkuenstler Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Founder and artistic director of "Allegro Vivo", the International Chambermusic Festival Austria, Professor at the J.M.Hauer Conservatory of Music. He is also a distiguished recipient of Austrian cultural awards. His own compositions include instrumental as well as vocal works >>> See: http://www.music.at/khadem-missagh/index.html?cve




*******************


Born in Austria 1977, Vahid Khadem-Missagh received his first violin lessons at the age of four from his father, Bijan Khadem-Missagh. From the early age of eleven he continued his musical studies in Boris Kuschnir's masterclass at the Conservatory of Music in Vienna. With twelve years he won the Mozart competition and gave his debut as soloist with orchestra in Salzburg. Further studies with Rainer Kachl and Gerhard Schulz at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna and with Igor Ozim in Bern/Switzerland. Mastercourse studies with Tibor Varga and Zakhar Bron >>> www.Khadem-Missagh.com




(orignially posted by darius_kadivar_65@hotmail.com )
_________________
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberator]

HOLLYWOOD:


http://www.goldentrailer.com/judges.html#markamin


MARK AMIN, Vice Chairman, Lions Gate Entertainment
Mark Amin is currently Vice Chairman, Member of the Board of Directors, and one of the largest shareholders of Lions Gate Entertainment, the leading independent producer and distributor of films in the United States. Throughout the past three years, Lions Gate has received nine Academy Award Nominations of which it won three. This year, the company boasts three nominations for Shadow of the Vampire and Amores Perros.

Mr. Amin founded and acted as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trimark Holdings, Inc., the parent company to Trimark Pictures, from 1985 to October of 2000, when the company merged with Lions Gate Entertainment. Trimark Pictures was the leading publicly traded, independent video and film production and distribution company in the entertainment industry throughout the 1980's and 1990's, distributing motion pictures domestically and internationally, providing licensing to the broadcast industry through Trimark Television and providing product for the video market through Trimark Home Video.

Mr. Amin's film credits as Executive Producer include the critically acclaimed feature Eve's Bayou, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Lynn Whitfield, which received seven Image Award nominations including Best Motion Picture. Other films include Sprung, starring Tisha Campbell, and Diplomatic Siege, starring Tom Berenger.

In 1999, Trimark Television produced The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn, which won the night for highest ratings on May 9th of that year for CBS sweeps. The telefilm featured Academy Award Winners Sidney Poitier and Dianne Wiest. The company had previously produced Trucks, based on a Stephen King short story and produced for USA Cable Networks.

On the home video side, company successes included Natural Born Killers-The Director's Cut, La Femme Nikita, Doom Generation, the direct-to-video series The Ultimate Fighting Championship, Chinese Box, Scarred City, and Cube.

In 1999, Trimark Pictures became the first motion picture company to form a partnership for the exhibition of movies via the internet, thus creating Cinemanow.com. Its deal with broadcast.com allowed Trimark to stream a significant portion of its video catalogue, including the cult-classic Leprechaun, on the internet and positioned the company as the first studio to embrace this new entertainment medium.

Cinemanow.com, along with its parent company Trimark Pictures, merged with Lions Gate Entertainment in October of 2000. Mr. Amin remains deeply involved in the day to day activities of both companies, as Vice Chairman of Lions Gate and Chairman of Cinemanow.com.

Mr. Amin co-founded 20/20 Video, a video specialty store in Los Angeles, California. 20/20 Video quickly grew to become the region's largest video specialty chain with 15 stores before he sold his interest in 1987.

From 1975 until 1981, Mr. Amin was involved in a variety of business ventures including real estate, petro chemicals and commodities.

Mr. Amin graduated from the John Anderson School of Business at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Masters of Business Administration in Marketing in 1975. He was previously awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics by the University of Kansas. Mr. Amin was born in Rafsanjan, Iran, in 1950, and lived there until the age of 17, when he moved to the United States.

Mr. Amin is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
_________________
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" -J.F.K


http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/