Entries for the 'Sports, Art, and Entertainment' Category

New York, USA –Basima is a Chaldean victim of an accident that kills almost her entire family, including her husband and her newborn baby; she takes off her head scarf, revealing the burns on her face.  She sits before an audience sharing her private hell and the suffering of the Iraqi people. 

On the stage of the New York Theater Workshop creators, Erik Jenson (co-writer) and Jessica Blank (writer and director) share the personal tragedies of Iraqi citizens during the war.  The play titled “Aftermath” in its final week of performance has earned impressive reviews as it depicts the private experiences of Iraqis.  Including the hardest hit and most vulnerable among Iraqi citizens, Chaldeans.   Leila Buck, plays a Chaldean dermatologist forced to treat the wounded against her will. 

The play tries to show the war’s continual effect on ordinary Iraqis widely ignored by media coverage since a new president was elected in the United States.  A voice-over during the play explains how over four million Iraqis remain refugees from their land. 

From the stage a young attractive woman softly murmurs, “Most Americans don’t know what a bomb sounds like. You don’t feel your eardrums, from the sound. We also don’t know what it smells like after the bomb has hit the target.”

“You don’t get that from TV,” the translator adds.

Michigan, USA - The 2009 Chaldean Football League (CFL) season begins this Sunday, August 2nd holding their season game opener at West Bloomfield High School.  The CFL celebrates 30 years of community sport service.  This '09 CFL season promises to be one of the more electrifying as player match-ups, rookie talent, and new coaches add a highly unpredictable dimension of excitement and uncertainty. 

The '09 season caps the third and final year of player protection leaving the 2010 season wide open as all sixty CFL player contracts are available for draft.  The change leaves two rookie coaches little time to review player talents or adapt to the highly competitive league.  Coach Mike Zeer will be leading team White replacing Coach Joey Kejbou, who was forced to step down due to required hand surgery reports Commissioner Jonna.  Team Black's Coach Roy Sitto is sidelined with a shoulder injury and being replaced with Coach  Tarik Kama.   "Both new coaches have years of CFL experience and are looking to make the most of the coaching opportunity," said the CFL commissioner. 

California, USA –The Grossmont Symphony Orchestra (GSO) have been invited to play along with world class Chaldean musicians in the presentation of “Middle East Meets West.”   The GSO, under the musical direction of Dr. Randall Tweed, is a seventy-five member orchestral ensemble comprised of music and non-music majors, and talented musicians from the community.

The orchestra, whose musical performance home is El Cajon's own "East County Performing Arts Center" (ECPAC), performs a large variety of concerts from serious classical "arts" performances to lighter "pops" entertainment. Local and nationally reputed performing artists are frequent soloists with the GSO.

The St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church in El Cajon helped organize the appearance of special guest artist and world class violinisht Luay Yousif. Yousif, born in Baghadad in 1979, has performed with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He has lived in the U.S. since 2007.

Baghdad, IRAQ – Christan and Muslim Iraqis mourn the passing of one of their countryman’s sports heroes.  Emmanuel Baba Dawud, better known as Ammo Baba (Uncle Father).  He was known as the Arab world’s Pele, the “Sheikh of Iraqi coaches”, and a winged angel.  He scored the first ever international goal for Iraq against Morocco at the second Pan-Arab Games in Beirut in 1957 and coached the Iraqi national football team to various victories. 

Ammo Baba led Iraq to three titles in the Arabian Gulf football tournaments and the gold medal in the 1982 Asian Games in India. He was revered as a hero in his homeland.

Ammo Baba was born in Hinaidi, Baghdad during a time when Muslim and Christian relations were civil.  Dawud was a reluctant pupil at the base’s school. “I used to run out of school,” he recalled. “I was very lazy in my lessons, but I was very good at sports.”

So good that, for a time, he held the record as one of Iraq’s fastest 400-metre runners.

Michigan, USA - The Chaldean Church Sports League (CCSL) has reached the playoff point.  Five divisions of the Chaldean community's top basketball players compete in a final four showdown for a bid at the championship game.  Games begin at 2 o’clock in the afternoon at the Boys and Girls club of Southeast Oakland County in Royal Oak.

The CCSL proves to be one of the Chaldean community’s hottest leagues showcasing top talent from ages 10 – 18 in basketball.  The heat is on in the CCSL in all divisions as last year’s returning coaches hope to repeat.  However, new rookie coaches in the league are proving to be a bit to handle. 

The CCSL final four will be played this Sunday at the Boys and Girls Club of South Oakland County.  CCSL organizers invite the entire community to join their family, friends, and fans as they cheer their players on to the championship games. 

Baghdad, IRAQ - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki attended the inaugural re-opening of Iraq’s National Museum.  “The opening is another sign of Iraq’s stabilization,” says Thair Yatooma, of the Iraqi Citizen Council of Art, an advisory group of the National Museum.  “The opening of the National Museum in Baghdad is a message from the government to foreign tourists: you are welcome." 

The Prime Minister cut the ribbon at the official reopening saying, "We have ended the black wind (of violence) and have started the reconstruction process." This morning, the first tourists entered the museum: for now, only guided tours for groups are allowed; it will take time to reopen the museum to private citizens.

However, some say the Museum must bring the Christian history of Iraq back into the light.  The National Museum had a long standing policy of prohibiting any display of Christian art to the general public.  The section dedicated to the Christian community could be visited only by foreign tourists; it was not accessible to Arab Iraqis. “The Christian presence is profound, deeply grounded, setting down roots over centuries; Saddam Hussein may have protected it, he always concealed it from the eyes of ordinary citizens" says Yatooma.

Illinois, USA – Chaldeans and basketball may become as natural as American and apple pie.  The sport is taking hold of the community as some of the most dedicated fans show their support.  However,   becoming fans and sitting on the sidelines is rarely enough for the ambitious community. 

Adel Meram a former basketball coach in Baghdad Iraq taught fundamental basketball in the early 60’s to Iraqi students.  Meram says it seems basketball is returning to its historic roots when dealing with the Chaldean community.  Today the Chaldean Basketball League and the Chaldean Church Sports League boast one of the largest and most competitive and action packed youth leagues in the community. 

Meram says the natural competitive drive of Chaldeans soon pushed them on the court to take on their school peers and friends in parking lots and playgrounds.  Meram goes on to share that basketball was invented in 1891. The inventor of the game was a Canadian clergyman, James Naismith.  Fr. Naismith invented basketball as an alternative to the calisthenics and marching of his faith filled students to keep fit in the winters.  

Washington DC, USA – Chaldean businessman Andy Shallal looks to capture and convert that energy into capital.  Not the type of energy that turns on your lights or moves your car.  The energy of millions of people pouring into the Washington DC to participate in Obama’s Inauguration is prime for celebration and prime for businesses. 

Although Andy Shallal, a native of Virginia has never been to an inaugural ball he sure plans to make the best of this one.  Shallal owns a number of restaurants around the DC area and is known in private circles as a peace proponent. 

So in celebrating the excitement and capturing the energy of the crowds, Shallal is hosting is own star-studded inaugural ball that just might capture the new president’s attention. 

California, USA – “They think they can bring back their ratings by fanning stereotypes and prejudices.  They are purposely picking on Chaldeans and Jews hoping to get better ratings.  NBC is using a strategy that is harmful and sick,” says Jenna Bittis of California. 

The Chaldean woman is upset over NBC’s new pseudo-reality show.  “They deliberately place outspoken and flamboyant mothers against insecure bimboes craving attention in their latest whorish hook-up show,” says Bittis.  “NBC is dead and desperately reaching at anything to try and make a come-back.”

Momma's Boys, the NBC dating-show-with-a-twist from Ryan Seacrest seems to have both Jewish and Chaldean viewers upset.  The show attempts to make a statement about prejudice using two middle aged overprotective mothers of implied Jewish and Chaldean descent unintelligently defending their wishes.  Obviously the shows producers are orchestrating outbursts for ratings in a Jerry Springer like fashion simply for ratings.  

"The sparks soon fly!" as the ad promotes when Khalood Bojanowski, a Michigan Iraqi Catholic mom says she needs her son to end up with a white Catholic girl: no black, Asian, Muslim or Jewish bachelorettes need apply. Another bachelor's mom, Esther, is a stereotypical smothering-Jewish mom, right down to the Yiddishisms, the kvelling over her "mensch" son and the Coffee Talk accent.  This rubs many of the girls the wrong way and with contestants encouraged to put on a good show for the reality cameras – the Jerry Springer like attacks begin. 

The aftermath is a viewer conditioned to believe the over-the-top Chaldean and Jewish stereotypes.

New York, USA – Chaldeans and Assyrians in American are appalled at Christie’s Auction House of New York.  “They are war profiteers moving the spoils of war,” says Chaldean art collector Enas Namoo from his downtown Chicago office.  The Chaldean art collector, well known for his Mediterranean art collection, was furious for what he saw in the catalog of the ancient art and antiquities auction at Christie's next week.  Among the collection was a pair of neo-Assyrian earrings established as artifacts of Mesopotamia.  “This belongs in the museum, not on an auction block,” said a angered Namoo. 

Along with Namoo, Iraqi authorities have also appealed to have the pair of neo-Assyrian earrings returned.  The 9,000–10,000-year-old earrings are expected to bring in up to $65,000, but Iraqi officials say they are part of the treasures of Nimrud and thus rightfully the property of Iraq.

Chaldean archeologist, art curator, antiquity expert, and former director of the Iraq Museum Donny George says, “I am 100 percent sure they are from the same tombs from Nimrud. I witnessed the excavation."