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ESL Test Idioms with the phrasal verb carry

Free English Tests for ESL/EFL, English Language Proficiency Test, Advanced Level # 127




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An eagle, if pressed for food, might ......... a small baby that had been left in the open unprotected, but such an opportunity must occur very rarely.

(a) carry off
(b) carry through
(c) carry on with
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Finland and the Finnish upper secondary education system constitute a good example of the fact that it is possible to ......... very extensive readjustments with a view to making a system more flexible and adapted to individualized learning.

(a) carry off
(b) carry through
(c) carry on with
(d) carry away

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





India and Iran will continue to deepen ties and ......... bilateral projects, including the tri-nation pipeline and a multi-billion dollar gas deal.

(a) carry off
(b) carry through
(c) carry on with
(d) carry away

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





The liver regulates most chemical levels in the blood and excretes a product called bile, which helps ......... waste products from the liver.

(a) carry away
(b) carry through
(c) carry on with
(d) carry over

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





China's cultural industry was given a boost last week after the government announced its plan to ......... cultural reform in more than 20 provincial areas.

(a) carry away
(b) carry through
(c) carry off
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Items such as pointed scissors and ice skates are examples of articles that are not permitted in your ......... baggage when boarding an aircraft.

(a) carry off
(b) carry on
(c) carry on with
(d) carry away

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





An employee with 400 accrued sick leave hours at the end of the fiscal year will ......... into the new fiscal year 360 hours of sick leave and 8 hours of additional annual leave.

(a) carry over
(b) carry on
(c) carry off
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





When irrigation has no ......... system, the evaporating water deposits a gradual build-up of salinization, which is eventually damaging to plant life.

(a) carry over
(b) carry on
(c) carry off
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





The Scottish Parliament has appointed Mr. Maley to ......... an assessment of the current cost estimate and likely completion date of a new information technology project.

(a) carry over
(b) carry on
(c) carry off
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Animals and humans use the evaporation of water to ......... heat that is absorbed from the sun or generated by metabolic activity and exercise.

(a) carry away
(b) carry through
(c) carry off
(d) carry out

esl test: idioms with the phrasal verb carry (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level




test created by Mark Riddett


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ESL Topics to this test: What does "carry off" mean?, Phrasal verbs: 'carry over' and 'carry out', What does 'carry through' and 'carry away' mean?, Meaning of "carry over", Meaning of "carry out", Meaning of "carry on", Meaning of phrasal verb 'carry off', Idioms Whith The Phrasal Verb Carry


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Learning English Reading Workbook
This workbook will help the student improve his/her ability to understand written English. This guide contains several different readings, varying in length from 100 to 880 words. The passages included in this workbook are both academic (similar to what might appear in North American university texts) and practical (containing everyday English words and phrases that the student might come across) in nature. Following each passage are exercises to test the student's understanding of the text. The workbook is in PDF format offering the student the ability to use it directly on the computer screen or to print out a hardcopy.




Learning English Writing Workbook
This workbook focuses on the essay and its three different forms: expository, narrative and descriptive. Tips, techniques, and templates for other correspondence, such as letters and email, are also included. The workbook is in PDF format, which gives the student the flexibility to work with it directly on the computer or to print out a portable hardcopy.




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This 112-page guide has been developed to improve English listening abilities. This workbook will improve the student's listening skills so that verbal communication becomes easy and fun. This workbook gives the student the flexibility to both listen and read the dialogues enhancing his/her ability to develop listening techniques and gauge skill level. It also gives the student the opportunity to listen to native speakers using different tones of voice. The workbook is in PDF format, which gives the student the flexibility to work with it directly on the computer or to print out a portable hardcopy.




1000 Key English Words & Idioms
Learning English requires composure, determination, and attention to detail. The English language has many words that look similar, often resulting in confusion and spelling mistakes. The purpose of the 1000 Key English Words & Idioms guide is to identify the words that are most frequently misspelled, and to provide a forum for practice so that the student can quickly develop his or her vocabulary of English words. To facilitate memorization, the words have been placed in a printer-friendly format so students can create flashcards for use in the classroom, on the bus, or anywhere else.

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ESL Test Gerund or Infinitive

Free English Tests for ESL/EFL, English Language Proficiency Test, Advanced Level # 119




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......... me if I've told you this before.

(a) Stopping
(b) Stopped
(c) Stops
(d) Stop

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





All I can say at the moment is: Long ......... the company!

(a) live
(b) lives
(c) lived
(d) living

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Sometimes I wish I ......... what the future holds.

(a) know
(b) known
(c) knew
(d) knows

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





And at other times I'm glad I ......... know what the future holds.

(a) didn't
(b) doesn't
(c) hadn't
(d) don't

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Let's ......... there tomorrow if it's fine.

(a) going
(b) gone
(c) go
(d) goes

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Try ......... the door really hard if you want to open it.

(a) pushing
(b) push
(c) pushes
(d) pushed

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Try ......... these irregular verbs by next week.

(a) learned
(b) to learn
(c) learns
(d) learning

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





I really appreciate your ......... me at this difficult time.

(a) helps
(b) help
(c) helped
(d) helping

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





I'll finish now and I look forward to ......... you again soon.

(a) seeing
(b) see
(c) seen
(d) having seen

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Please come back soon and ......... the work you started two weeks ago.

(a) finished
(b) finishing
(c) finish
(d) finishes

esl test: gerund or infinitive (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level




test created by Alan Townend


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PIMSLEUR — 1650 Most Common Vocabulary Words in English (165 tests, elementary level)
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ESL Topics to this test: Expression: Stop me if I've told you this before, Why live and not living?, Wish - conditional, Why can we use does with I?, "Let's" plus infinitive, Try + gerund, To + infinitive after "try", Why helping? isn't help noun, too?, Meaning of "look forward to"


English Tutor
This collection of English language software is just like having your own tutor in a box! All four Learning English workbooks are included, providing instruction in and practice with the core principals of the English language: grammar, reading, writing, and listening. Also included is ESL PRO, a pronunciation drill and practice software program that will enable the student to accomplish successfully the most difficult aspect of language acquisition - pronunciation. As well, the 1000 Key English Words and Idioms guide identifies words that are the most frequently misspelled and provides a forum for practice so students can quickly develop their vocabulary of English words.



ESL PRO
Uses a phonetic approach to teaching students how to speak the English language properly. ESL PRO accelerates learning by teaching the key sounds that make up the English language. The student is then taught how to combine these sounds into words and sentences. The software provides the learner with native-speaker models to listen to and imitate. Students are able to record their voices and then compare the result with a native speaker's voice. As they practice each lesson and build on prior lessons, their English speaking skills will continue to improve. Completing the ESL PRO learning system is a student workbook that emphasizes key concepts taught in the software. A companion teacher's manual provides lesson plans and exercises for the classroom environment that can also be used by parents and tutors to stress key components of language acquisition. All answers for the student workbook can be found in the teacher's manual.


Learning English Grammar Workbook
This workbook provides valuable grammar instruction and hours of practice, providing the student with a strong background in this traditionally difficult area of English. The exercises included in this workbook will test the student's ability to recognize written English and correct grammatical form. The workbook is in PDF format offering the student the ability to use it directly on the computer or to print out a hardcopy.




Learning English Reading Workbook
This workbook will help the student improve his/her ability to understand written English. This guide contains several different readings, varying in length from 100 to 880 words. The passages included in this workbook are both academic (similar to what might appear in North American university texts) and practical (containing everyday English words and phrases that the student might come across) in nature. Following each passage are exercises to test the student's understanding of the text. The workbook is in PDF format offering the student the ability to use it directly on the computer screen or to print out a hardcopy.




Learning English Writing Workbook
This workbook focuses on the essay and its three different forms: expository, narrative and descriptive. Tips, techniques, and templates for other correspondence, such as letters and email, are also included. The workbook is in PDF format, which gives the student the flexibility to work with it directly on the computer or to print out a portable hardcopy.




Learning English Listening Workbook
This 112-page guide has been developed to improve English listening abilities. This workbook will improve the student's listening skills so that verbal communication becomes easy and fun. This workbook gives the student the flexibility to both listen and read the dialogues enhancing his/her ability to develop listening techniques and gauge skill level. It also gives the student the opportunity to listen to native speakers using different tones of voice. The workbook is in PDF format, which gives the student the flexibility to work with it directly on the computer or to print out a portable hardcopy.




1000 Key English Words & Idioms
Learning English requires composure, determination, and attention to detail. The English language has many words that look similar, often resulting in confusion and spelling mistakes. The purpose of the 1000 Key English Words & Idioms guide is to identify the words that are most frequently misspelled, and to provide a forum for practice so that the student can quickly develop his or her vocabulary of English words. To facilitate memorization, the words have been placed in a printer-friendly format so students can create flashcards for use in the classroom, on the bus, or anywhere else.

Available in Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.




To link to English-Test.net from your website, simply cut and paste the following code to your web page.



It will appear on your page as:
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copyright © 2003—2006 www.english-test.net

of belly dancers, exotic spices and ......... drink.

(a) incriminating
(b) intimidating
(c) intoxicating
(d) instigating

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Thai cuisine is one of the most romantic of the Asian cuisines as it still ......... an element of mystery and exoticism.

(a) remains
(b) retains
(c) refrains
(d) regains

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Modern Asian restaurants in Jakarta have an ......... history.

(a) extended
(b) external
(c) extracted
(d) exude

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Indonesia has an ......... range of Japanese restaurants as Japan has long been the biggest investor in the country

(a) ecliptic
(b) ecstatic
(c) eclectic
(d) eccentric

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





International restaurants in Singapore are ......... adept at simultaneously perfecting both eastern and western dishes on their menues

(a) partially
(b) particularity
(c) partly
(d) particularly

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Hong Kong has to be one of the few places on the planet where you can enjoy ......... cuisine and service at relatively reasonable prices.

(a) exquisite
(b) explicit
(c) expletive
(d) explosive

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





European cuisine always ......... a sense of nostalgia and romance, like running into an old flame.

(a) evolves
(b) evinces
(c) evokes
(d) evicts

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





America is ......... at the front of the race to become the world's most obese country.

(a) undecidedly
(b) undeniably
(c) underbelly
(d) underling

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





Many people drink wine, but many wine consumers know little about wine ......... or wine and food pairing because they are intimidated or put off by the pretensions often associated with wine.

(a) appropriation
(b) appreciation
(c) apportion
(d) apprehension

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test, advanced level





One of the most beautiful things about Jakarta is its ......... wealth from both within the archipelago and around the world.

(a) cursory
(b) cautionary
(c) coronary
(d) culinary

esl test: culinary delights (questions) english language proficiency test,

Shakira
Shakira

Shakira performing at the palace of Versailles outside Paris, France.

Origin Barranquilla, Colombia




Years active 1991–present
Genre(s)
Latin pop, rock

Label(s)
Sony










Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born February 2, 1977 in Barranquilla, Colombia; better known as Shakira) is a Latin pop singer and songwriter.
•
[edit]
Biography
Shakira was born to a mother of Spanish and Italian descent & an American-born father of Lebanese heritage. Shakira is also fluent in many languages including English, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, Portuguese and French.
She is of Roman Catholic faith.
[edit]
Beginnings
Shakira began writing and composing music at the age of nine. One of the first songs she had written was "Tus Gafas Oscuras", and its lyrical message revolved around her father and his grief over a son who had passed away due to a car accident. At the age of ten, Shakira applied for her school choir, but she was rejected because her voice had been noted as "too strong." Friends teased her by saying she sounded like a goat. Shakira was deeply hurt and considered giving up on singing, but instead of that she started looking for other singing opportunities. She decided to compete in a weekly television singing competition for children, Vivan Los Niños. Shakira won the contest.
Between the ages of ten to thirteen, Shakira was invited to various events in Barranquilla, and became a local celebrity. At that time she met local theatre producer Monica Ariza, who was impressed with Shakira and helped to make her known outside Barranquilla. During a flight from Barranquilla to Bogotá, Ariza happened to be sitting next to Sony Colombia executive Ciro Vargas. Vargas agreed to hold an audition for Shakira, which took place a few weeks later in a hotel lobby. Vargas was impressed and returned to the Sony office and gave Shakira's cassette to the song and artist director, but he was not excited at all, and thought Shakira was "a lost cause."
Vargas was convinced that Shakira had talent, and set up a surprise audition in Bogotá. He tricked the Sony Colombia executives to this bar, and around midnight he announced he had a suprise: Shakira. She sang three songs, and her performance was a hit. Shakira was subsequently signed to write and record three albums.
[edit]
1991–1994: Magia & Peligro
In June 1991, Shakira's debut album Magia (English: Magic) was released on the Sony label. The album launch was in the Teatro Amira de la Rosa, the biggest theatre in Barranquilla. The first single was the title track, a song she wrote for her first boyfriend, Óscar Pardo. The album, however, was not a commercial success, selling only one thousand copies.
In 1993, Sony rushed the recording of a poorly produced album Peligro (English: Danger) (produced by Eduardo Pazz), which was another flop. Shakira did not support the album and did not promote the album either. Although the ballad "Tú Seras La Historia De Mi Vida" was played on local radio stations, the dismal sales resulted in a quick disappearence of Shakira from the music scene.
Following the failures of her first two albums, Shakira turned to acting and played a role in a Colombian telenovela El Oasis, for which she also sung the theme song "Lo Mío". She did not have any acting experience and was not good at it, but it was enough to enhance her popularity and widen her network of contacts in the entertainment business. During this time, she also met Patricia Téllez, the Director of Special Projects for Caracol Television, making Shakira the channel's exclusive artist.
[edit]
1995–2000: Spanish market success
Shakira returned to the music business in 1995 with the album Pies Descalzos (English: Bare Feet), which established her commercial success. The album The Remixes was subsequently recorded and features remixes from the songs on Pies Descalzos, with some songs re-recorded in Portuguese.
Following the release of The Remixes, Shakira became acquianted with Emilio Estefan, Jr., who ended up working as an executive producer on Shakira's fourth studio album, ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? (English: Where Are the Thieves?) It was an expensive production, costing approximately $3 million. Singles from the album include "Ciega Sordomuda", "Moscas en la Casa", "No Creo", "Inevitable", "Tu", and the worldwide success "Ojos Así." The album's blend of rock and Latin soundscapes made it a big success. Shakira also produced Shakira MTV Unplugged, a live album based on the singles from ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? In March 2000, she started her three-month long "Tour Anfibio" through Latin America and the United States starting in Panama and ending in Argentina upon popular request.
[edit]
2001–2003: English market crossover
Upon the success of ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones?, Shakira began working on a crossover album to the English language. Collaborating with Gloria Estefan, Shakira wrote and recorded English versions of the tracks from ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones?, and new songs were also composed to create Laundry Service. Although it was aimed at the English language market, the rock and Spanish dance-influenced album also features four Spanish songs, including "Que Me Quedes Tú". Some critics claimed that Shakira's English skills were too weak for her to write in it (she was satirized in a MAD TV sketch), but Laundry Service was a success, yielding the worldwide hit "Whenever, Wherever" and singles "Underneath Your Clothes" (a Canadian number-one), "Objection (Tango)", and "The One". The album and its singles established Shakira's musical presence in the mainstream North American market.
In 2002, Shakira also released the Spanish greatest hits volume Grandes éxitos. A DVD and ten-track compilation album called Live & Off the Record, was released in 2004 commemorating Shakira's 2002-2003 world tour, the "Tour of the Mongoose". The name of the tour was derived from the fact that mongoose can defeat a cobra without being killed by its poison. The concerts were interspersed with visuals of a mongoose fighting a cobra.
[edit]
2005–2006: Fijación Oral/Oral Fixation
[edit]
Fijación Oral Vol. 1


Shakira on the cover of her sixth album Fijacion Oral Vol. 1.
Fijación Oral Vol. 1, Shakira's first Spanish language album since ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones?, was released on June 6, 2005 in Europe and on June 7, 2005 in North America and Australia. The lead single "La Tortura" (The Torture, featuring Alejandro Sanz) became one of the only Spanish songs to debut on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100; though it took time, it eventually reached number twenty-three on the chart, the highest position for a Spanish song in the United States. In Canada, "La Tortura" also became the highest-charting Spanish song when it debuted and peaked at number twenty-one. Its success across the rest of the world was widespread and it managed to peak within the top ten of the majority of the charts it entered; it reached number four in Germany and number two in Switzerland. In the U.S., "La Tortura" spent a still-record twenty-five weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Tracks chart, making it the most successful Latin single ever.
The video for "La Tortura" made its debut on MTV's Total Request Live at number nine, and was the second Spanish music video ever to be included in the countdown. It reached a peak position of number four on the countdown, setting a record for highest Spanish position ever on the chart; it also achieved some success on VH1's Top 20 Video Countdown.
Fijación Oral Vol. 1 was simultaneously released in Latin America and charted at number one in almost all of its countries. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and is currently the best-selling Spanish first-week sales album (157,000 copies), breaking Ricky Martin's self-titled album (number twelve, selling 60,000 copies). It was also well-received in non-Spanish speaking countries such as Italy and Germany, where it reached number one, Austria, where it reached number three, and Canada, where it reached number seven.
The second single from Fijación Oral Vol. 1, "No" (English: No), was released in September 2005. It failed to match the international chart success of "La Tortura", however peaked at number one in Colombia for fourteen non-consecutive weeks. It also reached number one in Spain and many other LatinAmerica countries like Chile, Ecuador and Mexico.
Shakira, who performed at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards in Miami, Florida on August 28, 2005, was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards: Best Female Video, Best Dance Video, and Viewers Choice for "La Tortura". Her performance at the awards ceremony made history as being the first performance ever that was sung completely in Spanish.
On December 8, 2005, Shakira was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Latin Rock Album for Fijación Oral Vol. 1.
[edit]
Oral Fixation Vol. 2


Shakira on the cover of her seventh album Oral Fixation Vol. 2.


The cover of Oral Fixation Vol. 2 was altered in the Middle East to avoid controversy.
Shakira's second English album, Oral Fixation Vol. 2, was released on November 29, 2005 in North America and Australia. "Don't Bother" has been well-received by music-critics as the album's lead single, but thus far has failed to peak within the U.S. top forty, reaching number forty-two.
On October 30, 2005 at the Hackney Empire in Hackney, East London, England, Shakira presented her new album Oral Fixation Vol. 2 to more than two hundred and fifty competition winners and selected members of the British press. The concert (at which Shakira performed four tracks from the album as well as previous work) was hosted by MTV and was featured in the MTV 5 Star campaign following her performance. Shakira is one of the first artists to be featured for the campaign.
Oral Fixation Vol. 2 was placed in pre-order status weeks before its release at the iTunes Music Store. Under this status, it gave a pre-order song which would not be available after its release date. The remix of "Don't Bother" was available in the other stores as a purchaseable song, which was the pre-order song in the United States. The album is included with a digital version of the booklet.
Recently the media has reported that Oral Fixation Vol. 2 has been censored in Egypt, the Middle East. Many Muslim nations have banned the song "How Do You Do" because of its lyrical content in which Shakira questions God. The song has been taken out of the album, and the cover has also been altered. Shakira appears behind a bush and is covered from her shoulders down, whereas her stomach is exposed in the North American and European LP cover editions. "Timor" is a political song relating to social issues.
The UK division of Sony BMG were reprimanded by Shakira's PR agency for incorrectly promoting the album in time for its worldwide release, resulting in the UK release date being postponed to February 27, 2006. To help promotion in the UK, which has always been a difficult area for Shakira, a DualDisc version of Oral Fixation Vol. 2 will be released worldwide.
Shakira has recently confirmed that she will embark on her second worldwide tour in April 2006; she has also confirmed interest in beginning a family with her fiancé, as well as in taking a more relaxed approach to music.

Sociology


Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. Here we see people engaged in various actions on the stairs of the institution of Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois.
Sociology is the study of society. The meaning of the word comes from the ending "-ology" which means "study of" and the stem "soci-" which refers to society. It is a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies, sometimes defined as the study of social interactions. It is a relatively new academic discipline which evolved in the early 19th century. It usually concerns itself with the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, and institutions. Sociology is interested in our behavior as social beings; thus the sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. Most sociologists work in one or more specialties or subfields (listed below).
In a broad sense, sociology is the scientific study of social aggregations (from a dyad to the world), the entities through which humans move throughout their lives. A related trend in the discipline, emerging since the late 1970s, attempts to make it a more "applied" discipline, applicable in areas such as non-profit organizations and nursing homes. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through subdisciplinary areas such as survey research, evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public sociology.
Sociological methods, theories, and concepts compel the sociologist to explore levels of reality that go beyond the commonly accepted rules governing human behavior. This specific approach to reality is known as the sociological perspective.
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History of sociology
Main Article: History of sociology
Sociology is a relatively new academic discipline among other social sciences including economics, political science, anthropology, history, and psychology. The ideas behind it, however, have a long history and can trace their origins to a mixture of common human knowledge and philosophy.
Sociology as a scientific discipline emerged in the early 19th century as an academic response to the challenge of modernity: as the world was becoming smaller and more integrated, people's experience of the world was increasingly atomized and dispersed. Sociologists hoped not only to understand what held social groups together, but also to develop an antidote to social disintegration.


Auguste Comte, who coined the term sociology
The term "sociology" was coined by Auguste Comte in 1838 from Latin socius (companion, associate) and Greek logia (study of, speech). Comte hoped to unify all studies of humankind--including history, psychology and economics. His own sociological scheme was typical of the 19th century; he believed all human life had passed through the same distinct historical stages and that, if one could grasp this progress, one could prescribe the remedies for social ills. Sociology was to be the 'queen of sciences'.
The first book with the term 'sociology' in its title was written in the mid-19th century by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer. In the United States, the discipline was taught by its name for the first time at the University of Kansas, Lawrence in 1890 under the course title Elements of Sociology (the oldest continuing sociology course in America and the Department of History and Sociology was established in 1891 [1],[2]) and the first full fledged independent university department of sociology in the United States was established in 1892 at the University of Chicago by Albion W. Small, who in 1895 founded the American Journal of Sociology [3]. The first European department of sociology was founded in 1895 at the University of Bordeaux by Émile Durkheim, founder of L'Année Sociologique (1896). The first sociology department to be established in the United Kingdom was at the London School of Economics and Political Science (home of the British Journal of Sociology) [4] in 1904. In 1919 a sociology department was established in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich by Max Weber and in 1920 in Poland by Florian Znaniecki.


Max Weber
International cooperation in sociology began in 1893 when René Worms founded the small Institut International de Sociologie that was eclipsed by the much larger International Sociologist Association [5] starting in 1949 (ISA). In 1905 the American Sociological Association, the world's largest association of professional sociologists, was founded.
Other "classical" theorists of sociology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include Karl Marx, Ferdinand Toennies, Émile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, and Max Weber. Like Comte, these figures did not consider themselves only "sociologists". Their works addressed religion, education, economics, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and theology, and their theories have been applied in a variety of academic diciplines. Their most enduring influence, however, has been on sociology, (with the exception of Marx, who is a central figure in the field of economics as well) and it is in this field that their theories are still considered most applicable.


Karl Marx
One shift in the discipline away from scientific explanation had philosophical roots. Early theorists' approach to sociology, led by Comte, was to treat it in the same manner as natural science, applying the same methods and methodology used in the natural sciences to study social phenomena. The emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method sought to provide an incontestable foundation for any sociological claims or findings, and to distinguish sociology from less empirical fields like philosophy. This methodological approach, called positivism, became a source of contention between sociologists and other scientists, and eventually a point of divergence within the field itself. Thus, while most sciences evolved from deterministic, Newtonian models to probabilistic models which accept and even incorporate uncertainty, sociology began to cleave into those who believed in a deterministic approach (attributing variation to structure, interactions, or other forces) and those who rejected the very possibility of explanation and prediction.
A second push away from scientific explanation was cultural, even sociological, itself. As early as the 19th century, positivist and naturalist approaches to studying social life were questioned by scientists like Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert, who argued that the natural world differs from the social world due to unique aspects of human society such as meanings, symbols, rules, norms, and values. These elements of society both result in and generate human cultures. This view was further developed by Max Weber, who introduced antipositivism (humanistic sociology). According to this view, which is closely related to antinaturalism, sociological research must concentrate on humans' cultural values. This has led to some controversy on how one can draw the line between subjective and objective research and has also influenced hermeneutical studies. Similar disputes, especially in the era of the Internet, have led to variations in sociology such as public sociology, which emphasizes the usefulness of sociological expertise to abstracted audiences.
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The science and mathematics of sociology
Sociologists study society and social behaviour by examining the groups and social institutions people form, as well as various social, religious, political, and business organizations. They also study the behaviour of, and social interaction among, groups, trace their origin and growth, and analyze the influence of group activities on individual members. Sociologists are concerned with the characteristics of social groups, organizations, and institutions; the ways individuals are affected by each other and by the groups to which they belong; and the effect of social traits such as sex, age, or race on a person’s daily life. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy. Most sociologists work in one or more specialties, such as social organization, social stratification, and social mobility; racial and ethnic relations; education; family; social psychology; urban, rural, political, and comparative sociology; sex roles and relationships; demography; gerontology; criminology; and sociological practice.
Although sociology emerged in large part from Comte's conviction that sociology eventually would subsume all other areas of scientific inquiry, in the end, sociology did not replace the other sciences. Instead, sociology came to be identified with the other social sciences (i.e., psychology, economics, etc.). Today, sociology studies humankind's organizations, social institutions and their social interactions, largely employing a comparative method. The discipline has concentrated particularly on the organization of complex industrial societies. Recent sociologists, taking cues from anthropologists, have noted the "Western emphasis" of the field. In response, many sociology departments around the world are encouraging multi-cultural and multi-national studies.
Today, sociologists research micro-structures that organize society, such as race or ethnicity, social class, gender roles, and institutions such as the family; social processes that represent deviation from, or the breakdown of, these structures, including crime and divorce; and micro-processes such as interpersonal interactions and the socialization of individuals.
Sociologists often rely on quantitative methods of social research to describe large patterns in social relationships and in order to develop models that can help predict social change. Other branches of sociology believe that qualitative methods - such as focused interviews, group discussions and ethnographic methods - allow for a better understanding of social processes. Some sociologists argue for a middle ground that sees quantitative and qualitative approaches as complementary. Results from one approach can fill gaps in the other approach. For example, quantitative methods could describe large or general patterns while qualitative approaches could help to understand how individuals understand those patterns.
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Social theory
Main article: social theory
Social theory refers to the use of abstract and often complex theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze social patterns and macro social structures in social life, rather than explaining patterns of social life. Social theory always had an uneasy relationship to the more classic academic disciplines; many of its key thinkers never held a university position. While nowadays social theory is considered a branch of sociology, it is inherently interdisciplinary, as it deals with multiple scientific areas such as anthropology, economics, theology, history, and many others. First social theories developed almost simultaneously with the birth of the sociology science itself. Auguste Comte, known as 'father of sociology', also laid the groundwork for one of the first social theories - social evolutionism. In the 19th century three great, classical theories of social and historical change were created: the social evolutionism theory (of which social darwinism is a part of), the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory. Although the majority of 19th century social theories are now considered obsolete they have spawned new, modern social theories. Modern social theories represent some advanced version of the classical theories, like Multilineal theories of evolution (neoevolutionism, sociobiology, theory of modernisation, theory of post-industrial society) or the general historical sociology and the theory of subjectivity and creation of the society.
Unlike disciplines within the “objective“ natural sciences -- such as physics or chemistry -- social theorists are less likely to use the scientific method and other fact-based methods to prove a point. Instead, they tackle very large-scale social trends and structures using hypotheses that cannot be easily proved, except by the history and time, which is often the basis of criticism from opponents of social theories. Extremely critical theorists, such as deconstructionists or postmodernists, may argue that any type of research or method is inherently flawed. Many times, however, social theory is defined as such because the social reality it describes is so overarching as to be unprovable. The social theories of modernity or anarchy might be two examples of this.
However, social theories are a major part of the science of sociology. Objective science-based research can often provide support for explanations given by social theorists. Statistical research grounded in the scientific method, for instance, that finds a severe income disparity between women and men performing the same occupation can complement the underlying premise of the complex social theories of feminism or patriarchy. In general, and particularly among adherents to pure sociology, social theory has an appeal because it takes the focus away from the individual (which is how most humans look at the world) and focuses it on the society itself and the social forces which control our lives. This sociological insight (or sociological imagination) has through the years appealed to students and others dissatisfied with the status quo because it carries the assumption that societal structures and patterns are either random, arbitrary or controlled by specific powerful groups -- thus implying the possibility of change. This has a particular appeal to champions of the underdog, the dispossesed, and/or those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder because it implies that their position in society is undeserved and/or the result of oppression.
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Social research methods
Main article: social research
There are several main methods that sociologists use to gather empirical evidence, which include questionnaires, interviews, participant observation, and statistical research.
The problem with all of these approaches is that they are all based on what theoretical position the researcher adopts to explain and understand the society the researcher sees in front of themselves. If one is a functionalist like Émile Durkheim, one is likely to interpret everything in terms of large-scale social structures. A symbolic interactionist is likely to concentrate on the way people understand one another. A researcher who is a Marxist or a neo-Marxist is likely to interpret everything through the grid of class struggle and economics. Phenomenologists tend to think that there is only the way in which people construct their meanings of reality, and nothing else. One of the real problems is that sociologists argue that only one theoretical approach is the "right" one, and it is theirs. In practice, sociologists often tend to mix and match different approaches and methods, since each method produces particular types of data.
The Internet is of interest for sociologists in three ways: as a tool for research, for example, in using online questionnaires instead of paper ones, as a discussion platform, and as a research topic. Sociology of the Internet in the last sense includes analysis of online communities (e.g. as found in newsgroups), virtual communities and virtual worlds organisational change catalysed through new media like the Internet, and societal change at-large in the transformation from industrial to informational society (or to information society).
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Sociology and other social sciences
In the early 20th century, sociologists and psychologists who conducted research in industrial societies contributed to the development of anthropology. It should be noted, however, that anthropologists also conducted research in industrial societies. Today sociology and anthropology are better contrasted according to different theoretical concerns and methods rather than objects of study.
Sociobiology is a relatively new field to branch from both the sociology and biology disciplines. Although the field once rapidly gained acceptance, it has remained highly controversial as it attempts to find ways in which social behavior and structures can be explained by evolutionary and biological processes. Sociobiologists are often criticized by sociologists for depending too greatly on the effects of genes in defining behavior. Sociobiologists often respond, however, by citing a complex relationship between nature and nurture. In this regard, sociobiology is closely related to anthropology, zoology, and evolutionary psychology. Nonetheless, for most in the discipline, its ideas are unacceptable. Some sociobiologists, such as Richard Machalek, call for the field of sociology to encompass the study of non-human societies along with human beings.
Sociology has some links with social psychology, but the former is more interested in social structures and the latter in social behaviors. A distinction should be made between these and forensic studies within these disciplines, particularly where anatomy is involved. These latter studies might be better named as Forensic psychology. As shown by the work of Marx and others, economics has influenced sociological theories.

Saddam Hussein


Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein0 Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي), born April 28, 1937 1, was President of Iraq from 1979 until his removal and capture after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
A leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and socialism, Saddam (see 2 regarding names) played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power. As vice president under his cousin, the frail General Ahmed Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces by creating repressive security forces, and cementing his own firm authority over the apparatuses of government.
As president, he ran an authoritarian government, and maintained power through the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Persian Gulf War (1991), a period which was devastating to Iraq, lowering living standards and human rights. Saddam's government repressed movements that it deemed threatening, particularly those from ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy.
While he remained a popular hero among many Arabs for standing up to his opponents in the West, such as the United States, some members of the international community continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and certain Iraqi groups lived in fear of his security forces. Saddam was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003 while hiding in a hole in a barn outside Tikrit, he is standing trial before the Iraq Special Tribunal, established by the Iraq Interim Government.
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Youth
Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Ouja, 8 kilometers from the city of Tikrit district of Iraq, to a family of shepherds. His mother named her newborn son "Saddam," which in Arabic means "one who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterwards, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She attempted suicide by throwing herself in front of a bus and refused to care for her new baby when he was born. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three. 5
His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassarvn, treated Saddam Hussein harshly after his return. He was abusive and forced the young boy to steal chickens and sheep for resale.
At about the age of ten, he fled the family to return to live with his uncle, who was a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his most influential and powerful advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, especially the lesson that he should never back down from his enemies, no matter how superior their numbers or capabilities. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalistic secondary school in Baghdad. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter.
Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The stranglehold of the old elites (the conservative monarchists, established families, and merchants) was breaking down in Iraq. Moreover, the populist pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence the young Ba'athist, even up to the present day. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed the wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the fifties and sixties, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser challenged the British and French, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically.
A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile he claimed to have attended the Cairo University School of Law.
Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, torn by rife factionalism, the new government was ousted within seven to eight months. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party. According to many biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which prompted his measures to promote party unity as well as his ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.
In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power under General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Tikriti and a relative of Saddam, who by this time had become an interrogator and torturer at the infamous "Palace of the End," the cellar of the former palace of King Faisal II. The Ba'ath's ruling clique named Saddam vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and vice president of Iraq.
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Consolidation of power


Saddam Hussein talking with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
In 1976 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government, and was the de facto ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party.
As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. By the late 1970s, Saddam had emerged as the undisputed de facto leader of Iraq.
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Consolidation of power
Saddam consolidated power in a nation riddled with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant. Stable rule in a country torn by political factionalism and conflict required the improvement of living standards. Saddam moved up the ranks in the new government by aiding attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party and taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following.
Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy along with the creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it. Ever concerned with broadening his base of support among the diverse elements of Iraqi society and mobilizing mass support, he closely followed the administration of state welfare and development programs.
At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On June 1, 1972, Saddam Hussein led the process of expropriating Western oil companies, which had had a monopoly on the country's oil. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 world oil shock, and Saddam was able to pursue an all-the-more ambitious agenda through skyrocketing oil revenues.
Within a period of just a few years, the state provided some social services to Iraqi people unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. Saddam initiated and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). [1] [2]
In order to diversify the oil-dependent economy, Saddam oversaw and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and development of other industries. The campaign effected a comprehensive revolution in energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, including many communities in the countryside and far outlying areas.
Before the early 1970s, the majority of the population resided in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised; and peasants accounted for roughly two thirds of the populace. This number would decrease dramatically, though, during the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Iraq in the 1970s, which was propelled by Saddam's channeling of oil revenues into the rapidly growing Iraqi industrial sector and the new Ba'athist welfare programs.
Nevertheless, Saddam focused intensely on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athist government in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the Iraqi countryside, the mechanization of agriculture on a large scale, and the distribution of land to farmers.6 He broke up the large holdings of the landowners and gave land to peasant farmers. The Ba'athists established farm co-operatives, in which profits were distributed in accordance with the labors of the individual peasant and the unskilled were trained. The government's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agriculture development in 1974 — 1975, a policy that Saddam largely spearheaded. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standards of the broad strata of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels for which Saddam had hoped.
Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, thus widening his original popular base of support while co-opting new sectors of the Iraqi population. Part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics, expanding government services forged patron-client ties between Saddam and his support base among the working class and the peasantry and within the party and the government bureaucracy.
Saddam's ruthless organizational prowess was credited with Iraq's rapid pace of development in the 1970s; development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million persons from other Arab countries and Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor.
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Succession
In 1979 President al-Bakr began to make treaties with Syria, also under Ba'athist leadership, that would lead to unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Saddam, the Vice President and de-facto ruler of Iraq, had to act to secure his grip on power. He forced the ailing al-Bakr to resign on July 16, 1979. Saddam formally assumed the presidency.
Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found spies and conspirators within the Ba'ath Party and read out the names of members who he thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one to face a firing squad. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty.
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Saddam Hussein as a secular leader
Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the model of Nasser. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims.
Domestic conflict impeded Saddam's modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's government rested on the support of the 20 percent minority of largely working-class, peasant, and petit-bourgeois Sunni Muslims, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's reliance on them as administrators.
The Shi'a majority were long a source of opposition to the government due to its secular policies, and the Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Sh'ia Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabizing tendencies. To maintain his regime against sources of opposition, the core of Saddam's government was made up of a retinue of close relatives and members of his Tikriti tribe.
In dealing with Shiites, Kurds, Communists, and other likely regime opponents, the government tended either to provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to take repressive measures against them. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. It was commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother. Since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate perceived opponents of Saddam Hussein. [3]
Saddam's internal security regime achieved notoriety for its extreme ruthlessness. In 1982, an assassination attempt was mounted against Saddam in the town of Dujail 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad. In retaliation, Saddam's security forces attacked the town, killing and executing up to 160 of its inhabitants, including a number of children. Around 1,500 townspeople were sent to prison and tortured.
A resident of Dujail now in his thirties recalls "They blindfolded me. But I was so young, it kept falling." and at a Baghdad detention center he witnessed "a machine that looked like a grinder and had some blood and hair [on it and] I saw bodies of people from Dujail". [4]
The entire town was also punished by having 1,000 square kilometres (250,000 acres) of farmland destroyed; replanting was only permitted 10 years later. The events in Dujail became the subject of criminal charges following Saddam's overthrow in 2003. [5]
Saddam justified Iraqi patriotism by claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as the ancient cradle of civilization Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.
As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as on Iraqi currency. Saddam's personality cult reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant (which he essentially wore during his childhood), and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would also be portrayed as a devout Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca.
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Foreign affairs

Saddam Hussein meeting with Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister of France, during a state visit to Paris in 1976
In foreign affairs, Saddam sought to have Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. Iraq signed an aid pact with the Soviet Union in 1972, and arms were sent along with several thousand advisers. However, the 1978 executions of Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union, which took on a more Western orientation from then until the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979). In 1975 he negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq.
Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French Osiraq, after the Egyptian God of the dead. It was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, because Israel suspected it was going to start producing weapons grade nuclear material.
After Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, Shah Pahlavi withdrew support for the Kurds, who suffered a total defeat. Nearly from its founding as a modern state in 1920, Iraq has had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. Saddam did negotiate an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy, but the agreement broke down. The result was brutal fighting between the government and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate.
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The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988)
Main article: Iran-Iraq War
In 1979 Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas — hostile to his secular rule — were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population.
There had also been bitter enmity between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, took up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following. Under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978.
After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. Iraq invaded Iran by attacking Mehrabad Airport of Tehran and entering the oil-rich Iranian land of Khuzestan on September 22, 1980. Saddam declared Khuzestan a new province of Iraq.
In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Iran's oil-rich, partly Arab-populated province of Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human-wave attacks by Iran. By 1982 Iraq was on the defensive and looking for ways to end the war.
Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive wars of attrition of the twentieth century. During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists. Many of these chemical weapons, along with Iraq's nuclear program, were developed with the help of companies from East and West Germany.
([6]) On March 16, 1988 Iraqi troops, attempting to crush a Kurdish uprising in the Al-Anfal Campaign, allegedly attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents, perhaps killing around five thousand people, mostly civilians. This action was not condemned at the time. Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for that and some other chemical attacks, a claim that is largely supported by the evidence gathered by international observers and accepted by most governments. 14.
Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support, particularly after its oil industry severely suffered at the hands of the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf. Iraq successfully gained some military and financial aid from the United States, the Soviet Union, and France, which together feared the prospects of the expansion of revolutionary Iran's influence in the region. The Iranians, claiming that the international community should force Iraq to pay the casualty of the war to Iran, refused any suggestions for a cease-fire. They continued the war until 1988, hoping to bring down Saddam's secular regime and instigate a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq.
The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties. Perhaps upwards of 1.7 million died on both sides. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins.
Saddam borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran and was stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction. The desperate search for foreign credit would eventually humiliate the strongman who had long sought to dominate Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East.
[edit]
Tensions with Kuwait
The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam saw his war with Iran as having spared Kuwait from the imminent threat of Iranian domination. Since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Persian Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, he argued, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Saddam urged the Kuwaitis to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but the Kuwaitis refused, claiming that Saddam was responsible to pay off his debts for the war he started.
Also to raise money for postwar reconstruction, Saddam pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices by cutting back oil production. Kuwait refused to cut production. In addition to refusing the request, Kuwait spearheaded the opposition in OPEC to the cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt.
Meanwhile, Saddam showed disdain for the Kuwait-Iraq boundary line (imposed on Iraq by British imperial officials in 1922) because it almost completely cut Iraq off from the sea. One of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic divides was the belief that Kuwait had no right to even exist in the first place. For at least half a century, Iraqi nationalists were espousing emphatically the belief that Kuwait was historically an integral part of Iraq, and that Kuwait had only come into being through the maneuverings of British imperialism.
The colossal extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves also intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of a mere 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; Saudi Arabia, by comparison, holds 25 percent.
The Kuwaiti monarchy further angered Saddam by allegedly slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered to be within its disputed border with Kuwait. Given that at the time Iraq was not regarded as a pariah state, Saddam was able to complain about the alleged slant drilling to the U.S. State Department. Although this had continued for years, Saddam now needed oil money to stem a looming economic crisis. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border.
As Iraq-Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. 7
U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, 1990, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that while George H. W. Bush and James Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraq-Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Later, Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.
[edit]
The Persian Gulf War


With hours remaining before the war, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar met with Saddam Hussein to discuss the Security Council timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Kuwait.
Main article: Persian Gulf War
On August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait, thus sparking an international crisis. The annexation of Kuwait gave Iraq, with its own substantial oil fields, control of twenty percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. The U.S. provided assistance to Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's seizure of Kuwait, the United States led a United Nations coalition that drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991.
U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had had the most friendly relations with the Soviets. On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, were extremely concerned with stability in the region.8 The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's price of oil, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake; Kuwait controlled approximately ten percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. [7] President Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally of the U.S. during the Reagan-Bush years, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time.9 Britain had a much closer historical relationship with Kuwait than did the U.S., dating back to British colonialism in the region. The country also benefitted from billions of dollars in Kuwaiti investment.
Cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable. U.S. officials feared that Iraq would retaliate against oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Washington since the 1940s, for the Saudis' opposition to the invasion of Kuwait. Accordingly, the U.S. and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including countries as diverse as Egypt, Syria and Czechoslovakia, deployed massive amounts of troops along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East.
During the period of negotiations and threats following the invasion, Saddam focused renewed attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to withdraw his forces from Kuwait if Israel would relinquish the occupied territories in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S. and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians. The allies ultimately rejected any connection between the Kuwait crisis and Palestinian issues.
Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. With unanimous backing from the Security Council, a U.S.-led coalition launched round-the-clock missile and aerial attacks on Iraq, beginning January 16, 1991. Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. A ground force comprised largely of US and British armored and infantry divisions ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February 1991 and occupied the southern portion of Iraq as far as the Euphrates.
On March 6, 1991, referring to the conflict, Bush announced: "What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea — a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law."
In the end, the over-manned and under-equipped Iraqi army proved unable to compete on the battlefield with the highly mobile coalition land forces and their overpowering air support. Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and casualties were estimated at approximately 20,000 according to U.S. data, with other sources pinning the number as high as 100,000. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to abandon all chemical and biological weapons and allow UN observers to inspect the sites. UN trade sanctions would remain in effect until Iraq complied with all terms.
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Gulf War aftermath
Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the resulting postwar devastation, laid the groundwork for new rebellions within the country. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's government. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed.
The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions beyond enforcing the "no fly zones". U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi'ite revolution. Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or militarily from the Persian Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against America. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world.
Saddam increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality, rape and prostitution, and the ritual phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the national flag.)
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1991-2003
Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Persian Gulf War. In April of 1993 the Iraqi Intelligence Service attempted to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait. However, Kuwaiti security forces foiled the car bomb plot. On June 26, 1993, the U.S. launched a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for the attack against former President Bush[8][9].
The UN sanctions placed upon Iraq when it invaded Kuwait were not lifted, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, and humanitarian aid ameliorated the humanitarian crisis. UN organizations (such as UNICEF and the WHO) have estimated between 500,000 and 1.2 million deaths were caused by the sanctions, mostly in the under-5 age group [10]. Skeptics have estimated that only 350,000 excess deaths occurred between 1991 and 2000 [11], and that many deaths were actually due to the bombing of Iraqi infrastructure. Some object to the accusation that these deaths were caused by the sanctions. They argue that Hussein's hoarding his country's resources was the true cause of the crisis. On December 9, 1996 the United Nations allowed Saddam's government to begin selling limited amounts of oil for food and medicine. Limited amounts of income from the United Nations started flowing into Iraq through the UN Oil for Food program. However, it alleged that, due to corruption on both sides, very little food and medicine was actually delivered to the Iraqi people.
U.S. officials continued to accuse Saddam Hussein of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, refusing to give out adequate information on these weapons, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions and "no-fly zones." Isolated military strikes by U.S. and British forces continued on Iraq sporadically, the largest being Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Charges of Iraqi impediment to UN inspection of sites thought to contain illegal weapons were claimed as the reasons for crises between 1997 and 1998, culminating in intensive U.S. and British missile strikes on Iraq, December 16-19, 1998. After two years of intermittent activity, U.S. and British warplanes struck harder at sites near Baghdad in February, 2001.
Saddam's support base of Tikriti tribesmen, family members, and other supporters was divided after the war, and in the following years, contributing to the government's increasingly repressive and arbitrary nature. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam's sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. They likely had a leading hand when, in August 1995, two of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law (Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel), who held high positions in the Iraqi military, defected to Jordan. Both were killed after returning to Iraq the following February.
Iraqi cooperation with UN weapons inspection teams was not total through much of the 1990s, and access to inspectors was ultimately blocked in 1998 by Saddam (see Governments' positions pre-2003 invasion of Iraq#Opposing U.S. Position). It has been speculated that either Iraq was deliberately hiding the weapons or playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with, rather than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials. Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector at the time, suggests that it was US foreign policy from the Bush 41 through the Clinton presidencies to depose Saddam Hussein, using the notion that he was a threat as justification, and that these adminstrations interfered with the action of weapons inspectors. [12]
Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally. Bush's successor, U.S. President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), maintained economic sanctions, as well as military control of the "Iraqi no-fly zones". In 1998, in response to the departure of U.N. weapons inspectors from Iraq, President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, declaring that regime change was necessary in order for Iraq to "rejoin the family of nations" [13] and allocating funding to support Iraqi exile groups. This was soon followed by the three-day Operation Desert Fox, an air-strike effort to hamper Saddam's weapons-production facilities and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites.
[edit]
2003 Invasion of Iraq

On April 4, satellite channels worldwide broadcast footage of the besieged Iraqi leader touring the streets of his bombed capital. Smoke was emanating from oil fires in the distance. As U.S.-led ground troops were marching toward the capital, a smiling Saddam Hussein greeted cheering, chanting crowds in the streets of Baghdad.10
Main article: 2003 Invasion of Iraq
The domestic political equation changed in the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which bolstered the influence of the neoconservative faction in the presidential administration and throughout Washington. In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, President George W. Bush spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government. Bush stated, "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade." "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror," said Bush.11
As the war was looming on February 24, 2003, Saddam Hussein talked with CBS News anchor Dan Rather for more than three hours — his first interview with a U.S. reporter in over a decade.12 CBS aired the taped interview later that week.
The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April, Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on April 9, Saddam was nowhere to be found.
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Pursuit and capture


Saddam Hussein after his apprehension by U.S. forces
[edit]
Pursuit
Saddam Hussein's whereabouts remained in question during the weeks following the fall of Baghdad, and the conclusion of the major fighting of the war. Various sightings of Saddam Hussein were reported in the weeks following the war, but none were authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain.
Saddam Hussein was at the top of the "most-wanted list," and many of the other leaders of the Iraqi government were arrested, but extensive efforts to find him had little effect. His sons and political heirs, Uday and Qusay, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant.
[edit]
Capture
On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by British prime minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, shortly afterwards, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, formally announced the capture of Saddam Hussein by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him." Bremer reported that Saddam had been captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. [14] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.
Saddam Hussein was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative." Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial had not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler." Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation.
The Special Operations Forces soldiers who captured Saddam Hussein turned him over to the 4th Infantry Division in order to avoid media publicity that would compromise their future missions. The 4th Infantry Division troops also received credit for their months of Military Intelligence and scouting work prior to the operation. The soldiers involved have this operation noted on their official US Army records (Officer and Non Commissioned Officer Evaluation Reports), and have received US Army Awards.
Some people have raised what they regard as abnormalities and inconsistencies in the capture of Saddam Hussein. These have received little attention from the mainstream media. For more on this, see the "Conspiracy theories" heading under Operation Red Dawn.
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Incarceration
On May 20, 2005, Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers The Sun of U.K. and New York Post, printed photos of Saddam Hussein in his jail cell wearing only his briefs with the headline "Tyrant's in his pants" (The Sun). On the page three of The Sun which is traditionally preserved for topless "Page Three girls", Saddam Hussein was shown wearing a white robe while doing laundry by hand, with the caption: "a pathetic figure as he washed his trousers in jail. (...) Now he sits astride a plastic pink chair while he carries out the chores of a laundry maid." [15] These photos, said to be "provided by American military sources to undermine the Iraqi rebellion" [16], were officially not authorised, being qualified "a clear violation of D.O.D. directives, and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals" by Bush's deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. The U.S. military said that it would "aggressively investigate" how the photographs of Saddam Hussein in captivity were released [17].
Trials



Saddam Hussein during his first appearance before the Iraqi Special Tribunal
On June 30, 2004, Saddam Hussein (held in custody by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Baghdad), and 11 senior Ba'athist officials were handed over legally (though not physically, as there is, at present, no adequate Iraqi prison to hold them) to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Particular attention will be paid to his activities in violent campaigns against the Kurds in the north during the Iran-Iraq War, and against the Shiites in the south in 1991 and 1999 to put down revolts.
On July 1, 2004, the first legal hearing in Saddam's case was held before the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Broadcast later on Arabic and Western television networks, it was his first appearance in footage aired around the world since his capture by U.S. forces the previous December.
On June 17, 2005 The former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad announced the formation, under his joint chairmanship, of an international Emergency Committee for Iraq, with a main objective of ensuring fair trials for Saddam Hussein and the other former Ba'ath Party officials being tried with him. [18]
On July 18, 2005, Saddam was charged by the Special Tribunal with the first of an expected series of charges, relating to the mass killings of the inhabitants of the village of Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt against him.
On August 8, 2005, the family announced that the legal team had been dissolved and that the only Iraq-based member, Khalil al-Duleimi, had been made sole legal counsel. [19]
On October 19, 2005 Iraqi authorities put Saddam Hussein back on trial — four days after the October 15 referendum on the new constitution. The trial was adjourned until November 28.
On November 28, 2005, Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin adjourned the trial until December 5 to allow time to find replacements for two defense lawyers who were slain and another who fled Iraq after he was wounded.
On December 5, 2005, Saddam's legal defense team stormed out of the court after questioning its legitimacy and asking about security issues regarding the protection of the defense. Saddam along with his co-defendents railed against Chief Judge Amin and the tribunal.
On December 6, 2005, Saddam Hussein shouted that he will not return "to an unjust court" when it convenes for a fifth session the following day. At the end of the session, when the judges decided to resume the trial the next day, Saddam suddenly shouted as the judges left : "I will not attend an unfair trial" and added "Go to hell!" [20]
On December 21, 2005, Saddam Hussein claimed in court that Americans had tortured him during his detainment "everywhere on [his] body" and that he had bruises as proof. [21]
[edit]
Personal
Saddam married Sajida Talfah in 1958. Sajida is the daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and mentor. Their marriage was arranged when Saddam was 5 and Sajida was 7, however, the two didn't meet until their wedding; they were married in Egypt during his exile. They had two sons (Uday and Qusay) and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala. Uday controlled the media, and was named Journalist of the Century by the Iraqi Union of Journalists. Qusay ran the elite Republican Guard, and was considered Saddam's heir. Both brothers made a fortune smuggling oil. Sajida, Raghad, and Rana were put under house arrest because they were suspected of being involved in an attempted assassination of Uday on December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, Sajida's brother and Saddam's boyhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity.
Saddam also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumored to be his favorite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a son, Ali, by Samira.


Saddam with his daughter, Rana Hussein
In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel al Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel al-Majid, defected to Jordan, taking their children with them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both of the Majid brothers were executed.
Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa Sultan al-Tikriti, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. Jamal surrendered to U.S. troops in April 2003. Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known in the United States as "Chemical Ali," who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas in 1988. Ali is now in U.S. custody.
In August 2003 Saddam's daughters Raghad and Rana received sanctuary in Amman, Jordan, where they are staying with their nine children. That month, they spoke with CNN and the Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya in Amman. When asked about her father, Raghad told CNN, "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart." Asked if she wanted to give a message to her father, she said: "I love you and I miss you." Her sister Rana also remarked, "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us." 13
In 2005 a GQ interview [22] of four American National Guardsmen from PA whose job was to guard Saddam after his capture quoted Saddam as saying, "Reagan and me, good.... The Clinton, he's okay. The Bush father, son, no good." According to the soldiers Reagan was a favorite topic of Saddam's. Saddam told them about how Reagan sold him "planes and helicopters" and "basically funded his war against Iran." Saddam told them that he "wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president."
In the same interview, the guards say that Saddam has a tattoo on his right arm. Tattoos are forbidden under traditional Islamic law.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood in the 1973 Disney movie, the most famous animated version of the legend.
Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero, an outlaw who, in modern versions of the legend, stole from the rich to give to the poor. Although most noted for his material egalitarianism, in the stories he also pursues other types of equality and justice. However, as mentioned below, Robin Hood was not quite so generous in the original medieval legends. In the end, since most events in the various Robin Hood stories are fictional, arguments over the "real" or "true" Robin Hood are unlikely to reach any conclusion. Even if Robin Hood or a similar person did indeed exist, finding concrete evidence about his life is highly improbable.
•
[edit]
The Robin Hood legend
The stories relating to Robin Hood are apocryphal, verging on the mythological. The modern image widely held today contrasts in many ways with the medieval legend. The modern Robin Hood was created by 16th and 17th century dramatists and writers, while the medieval Robin Hood was probably the creation of wandering minstrels, and is a more elusive figure.
His first appearance in a manuscript is in William Langland's Piers Plowman (1377) in which Sloth, the lazy priest, boasts "I ken [know] 'rimes of Robin Hood." The next notice is in Wyntown's Scottish Chronicle, written about 1420, where the following lines occur — without any connection, and in the form of an entry — under the year 1283:
Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude Wayth-men ware commendyd gude: In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
In 1439, a petition was presented to Parliament against one Piers Venables of Aston, in Derbyshire, "who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne."—Rot. Parl. v. 16. This is the first portrayal of Robin Hood as an antihero, which would stick with him to the 17th century, when Guy Fawkes and his associates were described as "Robin Hoods" by Robert Cecil.
The first historical mention of Robin Hood is in a passage of the "Scotichronicon", written partly by John Fordun between 1377 and 1384, and partly by his pupil Walter Bower, in about 1450, who largely interpolated the work of his master. Among his interpolations is a passage translated as follows. It is inserted immediately after Fordun's account of the defeat of Simon de Montfort and the punishments inflicted on his adherents:
At this time, [sc. 1266,] from the number of those who had been deprived of their estates arose the celebrated bandit Robert Hood, (with Little John and their accomplices,) whose achievements the foolish vulgar delight to celebrate in comedies and tragedies, while the ballads upon his adventures sung by the jesters and minstrels are preferred to all others.
According to The Annotated Edition of the English Poets - Early ballads (London, 1856, p.70):
His death is stated by Ritson to have taken place on the 18th of November, 1247, about the eighty-seventh year of his age; but according to the following inscription found among the papers of the Dean of York, and quoted from the Appendix to Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, by Mr. Gutch... the death occurred a month later. In this inscription, which bears evidence of high antiquity, Robin Hood is described as Earl of Huntington—his claim to which title has been as hotly contested as any disputed peerage upon record.
Hear undernead dis laitl stean
Lais Robert Earl of Huntingtun
Near arcir der as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im Robin Heud
Sic utlaws as hi an is men
Vil England nivr si agen.
Obiit 24 Kal Dekembris 1247
This inscription also appears on a grave in the grounds of Kirklees Priory near Kirklees Hall (ironically in Calderdale) and close to Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Not surprisingly this is regarded as Robin Hood's grave (see below). The language of this inscription is questionable, though: it has the semblance of faked antiquity, and is easily readable as phonetic modern English.
Printed versions of Robin Hood ballads appear in the early 16th century, shortly after the advent of printing in England. In these ballads, Robin Hood is a yeoman which, by that time, meant an independent tradesman or farmer. It is only in the late 16th century that he becomes a nobleman, the Earl of Huntington, Robert of Locksley, or later still, Robert Fitz Ooth.
His romantic attachment to Maid Marian (or "Marion") (originally known as Mathilda) is also a product of this later period and probably has something to do with the French pastoral play of about 1280, the Jeu de Robin et Marion. Aside from the names, there is no recognizable Robin Hood connection to the play.
The late 16th century is also the period when the Robin Hood story is moved back in time to the 1190s, when King Richard was absent from his throne, fighting in the crusades. (See Mair, Historia Majoris Britanniae). One of the original Robin Hood ballads refers to King Edward (Edward I, II, and III ruled England from 1272 to 1377). The idea of Robin Hood as a high-minded Saxon fighting Norman Lords originates in the 19th century, (see e.g. Thierry, Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands, livr. xi) most notably in the part Robin Hood plays in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819), chapters 40 - 41, where the familiar modern Robin Hood — "King of Outlaws and prince of good fellows!" as Richard the Lionheart calls him — makes his debut.
The folkloric Robin Hood was deprived of his lands by the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham and became an outlaw. The Sheriff does indeed appear in the early ballads (Robin kills and beheads him), but there is nothing as specific as this allegation. Robin's other enemies include the rich abbots of the Catholic Church and a bounty hunter named Guy of Gisbourne, whom Robin kills and beheads as well. The early ballads contain nothing about giving to the poor, although Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight.
In the ballads, the original "Merry Men" (though not called that) included: Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet (or Scathlock), Much the Miller's Son, and Little John — who was called "little" as a joke, as he was quite the opposite. The minstrel Alan-a-Dale, who narrates Robin's adventures in song, is a later invention in Robin Hood plays.
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Possible locations
In modern versions of the legend, Robin Hood is said to have taken up residence in the verdant Sherwood Forest in the county of Nottinghamshire. This is a matter of some considerable contention. The original ballads speak of his being in Barnsdale (the area between Pontefract and Doncaster), some fifty miles north of Sherwood in the county of Yorkshire. This is reinforced for some by the similarity of Locksley to the area of Loxley in Sheffield, where in nearby Tideswell, which was the “Kings Larder” in the Royal Forest of the Peak, a record of Robert de Lockesly in court is found, perhaps in his retirement years in 1245. Although it cannot be proved this is the man himself, it is believed he had a brother called Thomas, which gives credence to the following reference:
“(24) No. 389, f0- 78. Ascension Day, 29 H. III., Nic Meverill, with John Kantia, on the one part, and Henry de Leke. Henry released to Nicolas and John 5 m. rent, which he received from Nicolas and John and Robert de Lockesly for his life from the lands of Gellery, in consideration of receiving from each of them 2 M. only, the said Henry to live at table with one of them and to receive 2 m. annually from the other. T., Sampson de Leke, Magister Peter Meverill, Roger de Lockesly, John de Leke, Robert fil Umfred, Rico de Newland, Richard Meverill. (25) No. 402, p. 80 b. Thomas de Lockesly bound himself that lie would not sell his lands at Leke, which Nicolas Meveril had rendered to him, under a penalty of L40. (40 marks)”
In Barnsdale Forest there is at least one Robin Hood's Well (by the side of the Great North Road), one Little John's Well (near Hampole) and a Robin Hood's stream (in Highfields Wood at Woodlands).
There is something of a modern movement amongst Yorkshire residents to re-confirm the legend of Robin Hood, to the extent that South Yorkshire's new airport, on the site of the redeveloped RAF Finningley airbase near Doncaster, has been given the name Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield.
There has long been a pub in the village of Hatfield Woodhouse, quite close to the airport, which is known as The Robin Hood and Little John.


The "Robin Hood Tree"
This debate is hardly surprising, given the considerable value that the Robin Hood legend has for local tourism. One of Nottinghamshire's biggest tourist attractions is the Major Oak, a tree that local folklore claims was the home of the legendary outlaw. There is debate as to whether the tree is old enough: some think its age has been exaggerated, especially as it may be two or more trees fused together, which may have been caused by coppicing. The Sheriff of Nottingham also had jurisdiction in Derbyshire that was known as the “Shire of the Deer,” and this is where the Royal Forest of the Peak is found, which roughly corresponds to today's Peak District National Park. The Royal Forest included Bakewell, Tideswell, Castleton, Ladybower and the Derwent Valley near Loxley. The Sheriff of Nottingham possessed property near Loxley, including Hazlebadge Hall, Peveril Castle and Haddon Hall. Mercia, to which Nottingham belonged, came to within three miles of Sheffield City Centre. The supposed grave of Little John can be found in Hathersage, also in the Peak District.
Robin Hood himself is reputed to be buried in the grounds of Kirklees Priory near Brighouse in West Yorkshire. There is an elaborate grave there with the inscription referred to above. The story is that the Prioress was a relative of Robin's. Robin was ill and staying at the Priory where the Prioress was supposedly caring for him. However, she betrayed him, his health worsened, and he eventually died there.
Before he died, he told Little John (or possibly another of his Merry Men) where to bury him. He fired an arrow from his bow from the Priory window, and where the arrow landed was to be the site of his grave. The actual grave is within sight of the ruins of the Priory, and this lends credence to this version of Robin's life story.
The grave can be visited on occasional organised walks, organised by Calderdale Council Tourist Information office.
There are pubs called the Robin Hood in both nearby Brighouse and at Cragg Vale–higher up in the Pennines beyond Halifax, West Yorkshire. There is at least one settlement in West Yorkshire called Robin Hood. With all these references to Robin Hood, it is not surprising that the people of both South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire lay some claim to Robin Hood–who, if he existed, could easily have roamed between Nottingham, Lincoln, Doncaster, and right into West Yorkshire. In those days, Sherwood Forest and Barnsdale Forest were probably all one vast forest affording plenty of cover for a band of outlaws.
[edit]
Modern interpretations
Songs, plays, games, and, later, novels, musicals, films, and TV series have developed Robin Hood and company according to the needs of their times, and the mythos has been subject to extensive ideological manipulation. Maid Marian, for instance, something of a warrior maiden in early Victorian novels, was reduced in demeanour to passivity during the period of the women's suffrage movement. As the media power of the modern feminist movement gathered momentum, Marian reacquired an altogether more active role.
Robin Hood himself has been transformed from an "outlaw for venyson" with an occasional element of generosity with no particularly notable skill in archery–and no suggestion of political animosity–in the original tales, to a medieval Che Guevara, a deadly accurate master archer fighting a guerrilla war against Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and his vicious second, Guy of Gisbourne, on behalf of the oppressed and King Richard.
Robin Hood has become a shorthand for a good-hearted bandit who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Many countries and situations boast their own Robin Hood characters; the Category:Robin Hood page tracks them.
[edit]
.


Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

Robin Hood

Robin Hood in the 1973 Disney movie, the most famous animated version of the legend.
Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero, an outlaw who, in modern versions of the legend, stole from the rich to give to the poor. Although most noted for his material egalitarianism, in the stories he also pursues other types of equality and justice. However, as mentioned below, Robin Hood was not quite so generous in the original medieval legends. In the end, since most events in the various Robin Hood stories are fictional, arguments over the "real" or "true" Robin Hood are unlikely to reach any conclusion. Even if Robin Hood or a similar person did indeed exist, finding concrete evidence about his life is highly improbable.
•
[edit]
The Robin Hood legend
The stories relating to Robin Hood are apocryphal, verging on the mythological. The modern image widely held today contrasts in many ways with the medieval legend. The modern Robin Hood was created by 16th and 17th century dramatists and writers, while the medieval Robin Hood was probably the creation of wandering minstrels, and is a more elusive figure.
His first appearance in a manuscript is in William Langland's Piers Plowman (1377) in which Sloth, the lazy priest, boasts "I ken [know] 'rimes of Robin Hood." The next notice is in Wyntown's Scottish Chronicle, written about 1420, where the following lines occur — without any connection, and in the form of an entry — under the year 1283:
Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude Wayth-men ware commendyd gude: In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
In 1439, a petition was presented to Parliament against one Piers Venables of Aston, in Derbyshire, "who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne."—Rot. Parl. v. 16. This is the first portrayal of Robin Hood as an antihero, which would stick with him to the 17th century, when Guy Fawkes and his associates were described as "Robin Hoods" by Robert Cecil.
The first historical mention of Robin Hood is in a passage of the "Scotichronicon", written partly by John Fordun between 1377 and 1384, and partly by his pupil Walter Bower, in about 1450, who largely interpolated the work of his master. Among his interpolations is a passage translated as follows. It is inserted immediately after Fordun's account of the defeat of Simon de Montfort and the punishments inflicted on his adherents:
At this time, [sc. 1266,] from the number of those who had been deprived of their estates arose the celebrated bandit Robert Hood, (with Little John and their accomplices,) whose achievements the foolish vulgar delight to celebrate in comedies and tragedies, while the ballads upon his adventures sung by the jesters and minstrels are preferred to all others.
According to The Annotated Edition of the English Poets - Early ballads (London, 1856, p.70):
His death is stated by Ritson to have taken place on the 18th of November, 1247, about the eighty-seventh year of his age; but according to the following inscription found among the papers of the Dean of York, and quoted from the Appendix to Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, by Mr. Gutch... the death occurred a month later. In this inscription, which bears evidence of high antiquity, Robin Hood is described as Earl of Huntington—his claim to which title has been as hotly contested as any disputed peerage upon record.
Hear undernead dis laitl stean
Lais Robert Earl of Huntingtun
Near arcir der as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im Robin Heud
Sic utlaws as hi an is men
Vil England nivr si agen.
Obiit 24 Kal Dekembris 1247
This inscription also appears on a grave in the grounds of Kirklees Priory near Kirklees Hall (ironically in Calderdale) and close to Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Not surprisingly this is regarded as Robin Hood's grave (see below). The language of this inscription is questionable, though: it has the semblance of faked antiquity, and is easily readable as phonetic modern English.
Printed versions of Robin Hood ballads appear in the early 16th century, shortly after the advent of printing in England. In these ballads, Robin Hood is a yeoman which, by that time, meant an independent tradesman or farmer. It is only in the late 16th century that he becomes a nobleman, the Earl of Huntington, Robert of Locksley, or later still, Robert Fitz Ooth.
His romantic attachment to Maid Marian (or "Marion") (originally known as Mathilda) is also a product of this later period and probably has something to do with the French pastoral play of about 1280, the Jeu de Robin et Marion. Aside from the names, there is no recognizable Robin Hood connection to the play.
The late 16th century is also the period when the Robin Hood story is moved back in time to the 1190s, when King Richard was absent from his throne, fighting in the crusades. (See Mair, Historia Majoris Britanniae). One of the original Robin Hood ballads refers to King Edward (Edward I, II, and III ruled England from 1272 to 1377). The idea of Robin Hood as a high-minded Saxon fighting Norman Lords originates in the 19th century, (see e.g. Thierry, Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands, livr. xi) most notably in the part Robin Hood plays in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819), chapters 40 - 41, where the familiar modern Robin Hood — "King of Outlaws and prince of good fellows!" as Richard the Lionheart calls him — makes his debut.
The folkloric Robin Hood was deprived of his lands by the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham and became an outlaw. The Sheriff does indeed appear in the early ballads (Robin kills and beheads him), but there is nothing as specific as this allegation. Robin's other enemies include the rich abbots of the Catholic Church and a bounty hunter named Guy of Gisbourne, whom Robin kills and beheads as well. The early ballads contain nothing about giving to the poor, although Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight.
In the ballads, the original "Merry Men" (though not called that) included: Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet (or Scathlock), Much the Miller's Son, and Little John — who was called "little" as a joke, as he was quite the opposite. The minstrel Alan-a-Dale, who narrates Robin's adventures in song, is a later invention in Robin Hood plays.
[edit]
Possible locations
In modern versions of the legend, Robin Hood is said to have taken up residence in the verdant Sherwood Forest in the county of Nottinghamshire. This is a matter of some considerable contention. The original ballads speak of his being in Barnsdale (the area between Pontefract and Doncaster), some fifty miles north of Sherwood in the county of Yorkshire. This is reinforced for some by the similarity of Locksley to the area of Loxley in Sheffield, where in nearby Tideswell, which was the “Kings Larder” in the Royal Forest of the Peak, a record of Robert de Lockesly in court is found, perhaps in his retirement years in 1245. Although it cannot be proved this is the man himself, it is believed he had a brother called Thomas, which gives credence to the following reference:
“(24) No. 389, f0- 78. Ascension Day, 29 H. III., Nic Meverill, with John Kantia, on the one part, and Henry de Leke. Henry released to Nicolas and John 5 m. rent, which he received from Nicolas and John and Robert de Lockesly for his life from the lands of Gellery, in consideration of receiving from each of them 2 M. only, the said Henry to live at table with one of them and to receive 2 m. annually from the other. T., Sampson de Leke, Magister Peter Meverill, Roger de Lockesly, John de Leke, Robert fil Umfred, Rico de Newland, Richard Meverill. (25) No. 402, p. 80 b. Thomas de Lockesly bound himself that lie would not sell his lands at Leke, which Nicolas Meveril had rendered to him, under a penalty of L40. (40 marks)”
In Barnsdale Forest there is at least one Robin Hood's Well (by the side of the Great North Road), one Little John's Well (near Hampole) and a Robin Hood's stream (in Highfields Wood at Woodlands).
There is something of a modern movement amongst Yorkshire residents to re-confirm the legend of Robin Hood, to the extent that South Yorkshire's new airport, on the site of the redeveloped RAF Finningley airbase near Doncaster, has been given the name Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield.
There has long been a pub in the village of Hatfield Woodhouse, quite close to the airport, which is known as The Robin Hood and Little John.


The "Robin Hood Tree"
This debate is hardly surprising, given the considerable value that the Robin Hood legend has for local tourism. One of Nottinghamshire's biggest tourist attractions is the Major Oak, a tree that local folklore claims was the home of the legendary outlaw. There is debate as to whether the tree is old enough: some think its age has been exaggerated, especially as it may be two or more trees fused together, which may have been caused by coppicing. The Sheriff of Nottingham also had jurisdiction in Derbyshire that was known as the “Shire of the Deer,” and this is where the Royal Forest of the Peak is found, which roughly corresponds to today's Peak District National Park. The Royal Forest included Bakewell, Tideswell, Castleton, Ladybower and the Derwent Valley near Loxley. The Sheriff of Nottingham possessed property near Loxley, including Hazlebadge Hall, Peveril Castle and Haddon Hall. Mercia, to which Nottingham belonged, came to within three miles of Sheffield City Centre. The supposed grave of Little John can be found in Hathersage, also in the Peak District.
Robin Hood himself is reputed to be buried in the grounds of Kirklees Priory near Brighouse in West Yorkshire. There is an elaborate grave there with the inscription referred to above. The story is that the Prioress was a relative of Robin's. Robin was ill and staying at the Priory where the Prioress was supposedly caring for him. However, she betrayed him, his health worsened, and he eventually died there.
Before he died, he told Little John (or possibly another of his Merry Men) where to bury him. He fired an arrow from his bow from the Priory window, and where the arrow landed was to be the site of his grave. The actual grave is within sight of the ruins of the Priory, and this lends credence to this version of Robin's life story.
The grave can be visited on occasional organised walks, organised by Calderdale Council Tourist Information office.
There are pubs called the Robin Hood in both nearby Brighouse and at Cragg Vale–higher up in the Pennines beyond Halifax, West Yorkshire. There is at least one settlement in West Yorkshire called Robin Hood. With all these references to Robin Hood, it is not surprising that the people of both South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire lay some claim to Robin Hood–who, if he existed, could easily have roamed between Nottingham, Lincoln, Doncaster, and right into West Yorkshire. In those days, Sherwood Forest and Barnsdale Forest were probably all one vast forest affording plenty of cover for a band of outlaws.
[edit]
Modern interpretations
Songs, plays, games, and, later, novels, musicals, films, and TV series have developed Robin Hood and company according to the needs of their times, and the mythos has been subject to extensive ideological manipulation. Maid Marian, for instance, something of a warrior maiden in early Victorian novels, was reduced in demeanour to passivity during the period of the women's suffrage movement. As the media power of the modern feminist movement gathered momentum, Marian reacquired an altogether more active role.
Robin Hood himself has been transformed from an "outlaw for venyson" with an occasional element of generosity with no particularly notable skill in archery–and no suggestion of political animosity–in the original tales, to a medieval Che Guevara, a deadly accurate master archer fighting a guerrilla war against Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and his vicious second, Guy of Gisbourne, on behalf of the oppressed and King Richard.
Robin Hood has become a shorthand for a good-hearted bandit who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Many countries and situations boast their own Robin Hood characters; the Category:Robin Hood page tracks them.
[edit]
.


Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

Greece
Hellas redirects here. For other uses, please see Hellas (disambiguation); for other uses of the word Greece, please see Greece (disambiguation).
Ελληνική Δημοκρατία
Ellinikí Dhimokratía



(National Flag)


National motto: Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος
(Greek: Liberty or Death)



Official language
Greek

Capital
Athens

Largest city Athens

President
Károlos Papoúlias

Prime Minister
Kóstas Karamanlís

Area
- Total
- % water Ranked 94th
131,940 km²
0.86%
Population
- Total (2004)
- Density
Ranked 74th
10,964,020
82/km²
Independence
- Declared
- Recognized From the Ottoman Empire
25 March 1821
1829
GDP
- Total
- GDP per capita (IMF 2005 est.)
$230.684 billion (28th)
$22,000(25th)

HDI (2003)
0.912 (24th) – high

Currency
Euro (€)1

Time zone
- in summer
EET (UTC+2)
EEST (UTC+3)

National anthem
Hymn to Freedom

Internet TLD
.gr

Calling Code
+30
1 Prior to 2001: Greek Drachma.

edit

Greece, (Greek: Ελλάδα Elládha or Ελλάς Hellás), officially the Hellenic Republic (Greek: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Ellinikí Dhimokratía, is a country in southern Europe on the tip of the Balkan peninsula. It has land boundaries with Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania to the north, and with Turkey to the east. The waters of the Aegean Sea border Greece to the east, and those of the Ionian and Mediterranean Sea to the west and south. Regarded by many as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, Greece has a long and rich history during which its culture has proven especially influential in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
o
[edit]
Name
Main article: Names of the Greeks
The historical name of Greece in Greek is Ἑλλάς Ellás /ɛˈlas/. This name is also written as Hellas in English, following the ancient Greek pronunciation /hɛˈl:as/. In modern Greek it is called more commonly Ελλάδα Elládha /ɛˈlaða/.
The name of Greece in European languages (English: Greece, French: Grèce, Portuguese: Grécia, Spanish and Italian: Grecia, Welsh: Groeg, German: Griechenland Swedish,Grekland , Dutch: Griekenland, Russian: Греция, etc.) comes from a different root: Γραικός Graikós (via Latin Graecus) which according to Aristotle was an ancient name for the Greeks. The Japanese name is ギリシャ (Girisha), lent from European languages. On the other hand, the name of Greece in some Middle Eastern and Eastern languages (Turkish: Yunanistan, Arabic: يونان (Yawnan), Hebrew: יוון (Yavan), ancient Persian: Yaunâ, Indian Pali: Yona, Malay and Indonesian: Yunani) derives from the Greek toponym Ἰωνία Iōnía. Norwegian, Chinese (希腊 Xila) and Vietnamese are three of the few languages apart from Greek in which the name Hellas predominates.
An interesting and unique form is kept in Georgian. In ancient times, Georgians (Colchs and Iberians) called Greeks ბერძენი berdzeni. This form derives from the Georgian word ბრძენი brdzeni – wise. According to Georgian historians, the name is connected with the notion that philosophy was born in Greece. Modern Georgians still call Greeks ბერძენი berdzeni and Greece საბერძნეთი saberdznet'i, 'Greeks' land' or literally 'land of the wise'.
Some Greeks prefer the name Hellas for the country and Hellenes for the people even in English. See Hellenes for discussion.
[edit]
History
Main Article: History of Greece.
[edit]
Prehistory and antiquity
The shores of Greece's Aegean Sea saw the emergence of the first civilizations in Europe, namely the Minoan and the Mycenaean. Αbout this time, the first alphabet was used by Minoans. After these, a Dark Age followed until around 800 BC, when a new era of Greek city-states emerged establishing colonies along the Mediterranean. Plato described how the Greeks live round the Aegean Archipelago "like frogs around a pond"; their name has always been associated with the sea.
[edit]
Roman rule and Middle Ages
Militarily, Greece itself declined to the point that the Romans conquered the land (168 BC onwards), though, in many ways, Greek culture would in turn conquer Roman life. Greece became a province of the Roman Empire, but Greek culture continued to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. When the Roman Empire finally split in two, the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire, centered around Constantinople (known in ancient times as Byzantium), remained Greek in nature, encompassing Greece itself. From the 4th century to the 15th century, the Byzantine Empire survived eleven centuries of attacks from the north, west and east until Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453 to the Ottoman Empire, when Constantine XI, the last emperor of the Palaeologus dynasty, fell. Greece was gradually conquered by the Ottomans during the 15th century.
[edit]
Ottoman Period


Theod.Vryzakis,The sortie of Messologhi
While the Ottomans were completing the main conquest of the Greek Mainland, two Greek migrations occurred. The first migration saw the Greek intelligentsia migrate to Western Europe - especially to Italy - and contribute to the advent of the Renaissance. The second migration of Greeks left the plains of the Greek peninsula and resettled in the mountains, the islands and Greek regions outside Ottoman control. In the mountainous regions, the Ottomans were unable to create a permanent military and administrative presence. As a result some Greek mountain clans across the peninsula, as well as some islands, were able to maintain a status of independence. The Sphakiots of Crete, the Souliots from Souli of Epirus, and the Maniots from Mani of Peloponnesus were the most resilient mountain clans throughout the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the 16th century and until the 17th century, Greeks began to migrate back to the plains and cities, adding to the increasing urban population. The millet system contributed to the ethnic cohesion of Orthodox Greeks by segregating the various peoples within the Ottoman Empire based on religion. The Orthodox Church, a religious institution with a keen sense of its national character, contributed to the Greeks from all geographical areas of the peninsula (i.e. mountains, plains, and islands) to preserve their ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage during the years of the Ottoman rule (although at the time it was not strictly speaking a "Greek" church - the Greek Church was instituted after the liberation). The Greeks who remained on the plains during Ottoman occupation were either Christians, who dealt with the burdens of foreign rule, or to a considerable extent Crypto-Christians (Greek Muslims who were secret practitioners of the Orthodox faith) in order to avoid heavy taxation. The Greeks who converted to Islam and were not Crypto-Christians became Turks in the eyes of Orthodox Greeks. Therefore, there was no recognition of "Greek Muslims", or of "Christian Turks". As a result, religion played an integral part in the formation of the Modern Greek and other post-Ottoman national identities.
[edit]
Creation of the modern Greek state


Eugène Delacroix,Massacre at Chios
The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. In 1821, the Greeks rebelled and declared their independence, but did not succeed in winning it until 1829. The elites of powerful European nations saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light (see, for example, the 1824 painting the Massacre of Chios by Eugène Delacroix). Scores of non-Greeks volunteered to fight for the cause — including people like Lord Byron. At times the Ottomans seemed on the verge of entirely suppressing the Greek revolution but were eventually forced to give in by the direct military intervention of France, Great Britain and Russia. This was the prelude of the so called "Eastern Question", the gradual dismemberment of the decaying empire by the western powers. The Russian ex-minister of foreign affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek noble from the Ionian Islands, was chosen as President of the new Republic following Greek independence. However, that republic was soon dissolved by the Great Powers which then installed a "Greek" monarchy. The Great Powers did not believe the Greeks were capable of governing themselves, and as such looked elsewhere for a prospective monarch. The first king, Otto of Bavaria, was of the German House of Wittelsbach, and the subsequent line was from the Germano-Danish House of Oldenburg. During the 19th and especially the early 20th centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge its boundaries to include the ethnic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire (the Ionian Islands were donated by Britain upon the arrival of the new king from Denmark in 1863, and Thessaly was ceded by the Ottomans without a fight). Greece would slowly grow in territory and population until reaching its present configuration in 1947.
In World War I, Greece sided with the entente powers against the Ottoman Empire and the other Central Powers. In the war's aftermath, the Great Powers awarded parts of Asia Minor to Greece, including the city of Smyrna (known as Izmir today) which had a large Greek population. At that time, however, the Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, denounced the Sultan's government in Istanbul and organised a new one in Ankara. During the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) the Turks eventually defeated the Greek armies and regained control of Asia Minor. Soon afterwards, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, fixing the borders to this date. A population exchange was included in the agreement and immediately afterwards, hundreds of thousands of Turks then living in mainland Greek territory left for Turkey in exchange for more than 1.22 million Greek residents of Asia Minor (excluding Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos).
In 1936, General Ioannis Metaxas established an authoritarian conservative dictatorship in Greece, seen as similar to Antonio Salazar's "New State". Greece under Metaxas is also compared to Spain at the time, although it lacked the political violence associated with Francisco Franco's regime.
In 1940, the Italian dictator Mussolini launched a surprise attack on Greece. The Greek counter-attack along the Albanian front gave the Allies their first victory against the Axis forces. Eventually, Mussolini's armies were saved from defeat with the intervention of Italy's Axis ally, Germany, whose forces overran and occupied Greece in April-May 1941 and remained there until 1944, when the Greek resistence and British forces liberated the country.
Despite the country's numerically small and ill-equipped armed forces, Greece made an important contribution to the Allied efforts in World War II. At the start of the war Greece sided with the Allies and refused to give in to Italian demands (see Oxi Day). Italy invaded Greece on 28 October 1940, but Greek troops repelled the invaders after a bitter struggle (see Greco-Italian War). Hitler then reluctantly stepped in, primarily to secure his strategic southern flank. Troops from Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy successfully invaded Greece, overcoming Greek, but also British, Australian, and New Zealand units within weeks.
To reduce the threat of a counter-offensive by Allied forces in Egypt, the Germans attempted to seize Crete in a massive attack by paratroops. Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, however, offered fierce resistance. Although Crete eventually fell, it is pointed out by historians that this, and the whole Greek campaign, delayed German plans significantly, with the result that the German invasion of the Soviet Union started fatally close to winter.
During the years of Nazi occupation, hundreds of thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in concentration camps, or of starvation. The occupiers murdered the greater part of the Jewish community despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many Christian Greeks to shelter its Jewish citizens. The Greek economy languished. After liberation, Greece experienced an equally bitter Greek Civil War between the communist-led Democratic Army and the Hellenic Army that lasted until 1949, when the communists were defeated in the battle of Grammos-Vitsi.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Greece continued to develop slowly with grants and loans through the Marshall Plan, and later through growth, notably in the tourism sector. In 1967, the Greek military seized power in a coup d'état and overthrew the conservative government of Panayiotis Kanellopoulos which had been preparing a general election set for May 28. The military established what became known as the Régime of the Colonels. However, the coup leaders were recognised internationally as the legitimate goverment after the, then, head of state, King Constantine, signed them in. In 1973, the régime abolished the Greek monarchy. In October 1973, George Papadopoulos appointed politician Spiros Markezinis as Prime Minister, with a mission undertake a transition to parliamentary democracy. Following the events of the Athens Polytechnic uprising, Papadopoulos and Markezinis were overthrown by a countercoup headed by junta hardliner Brigadier Ioannides on November 25, 1973. A new president, Phaedon Gizikis, and a new Prime Minister, Adamantios Androutsopoulos, were appointed.
Ioannides backed a Greek Cypriot military coup against President Makarios of Cyprus, which became a pretext for Turkey to intervene militarily under the Treaty of Guarantee in 1974 and occupied the north of the island. The resulting crisis between Greece and Turkey. Escalation in Cyprus led to the implosion of the military régime who had proved itself militarily incapable of mobilising its forces. Ex-premier Konstantinos Karamanlis was invited from Paris as interim prime minister under President Gizikis. He later gained re-election for two further terms at the head of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party, which he founded. In 1975, following a referendum to confirm the deposition of King Constantine II, a democratic republican constitution came into force. Another previously exiled politician, Andreas Papandreou also returned and founded the socialist PASOK party, which won the elections in 1981 and dominated the country's political course for almost two decades.
With the restoration of democracy, the stability and economic prosperity of Greece have grown. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the Euro as its currency in 2001. New infrastructure, funds from the EU and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, services, light industry, and the telecommunications industry have greatly raised the standard of living. Tensions continue to exist between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the delimitation of borders in the Aegean Sea, but relations have thawed considerably following successive earthquakes - first in Turkey and then in Greece - and an outpouring of sympathy and generous assistance by ordinary Greeks and Turks. This is in stark contrast to decades of hostility between these two countries, which saw repeated threats of war. Even though both were members of NATO, at times more than half of the entire Greek military was positioned against Turkey. Since 2000, Greece has become one of the chief advocates of Turkey's application to join the European Union.
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games were held in Athens, returning them to Greece for the first time since their modern inception in 1896. Despite widespread initial concerns over the city's ability to meet construction deadlines as well as over its ability to handle a potential terrorist threat, the Athens Games were widely praised by the ICO as the best to date. [1].
[edit]
Politics
Main article: Politics of Greece

Kostas Karamanlis, Prime minister of Greece
The 1975 constitution includes extensive specific guarantees of civil liberties. The President of the Republic, elected by an increased majority of the Parliament for a term of five years, is nominally the Head of State.
However, it is the prime minister and cabinet that play the central role in the political process, while the president performs very limited governmental functions, in addition to ceremonial duties.
Greeks elect the 300 members of the country's unicameral parliament (the Vouli ton Ellinon) by secret ballot for a maximum of four years, but elections can occur at more frequent intervals. Greece uses a complex reinforced proportional representation electoral system which discourages splinter parties and ensures that the party which leads in the national vote will win a majority of seats. A party must receive 3% of the total national vote to gain representation.
Greek parliamentary politics hinge upon the principle of the "dedilomeni", the "declared confidence" of Parliament to the Prime Minister and his/her administration. This means that the President of the Republic is bound to appoint as Prime Minister a person who will be approved by a majority of the Parilament's members (i.e. 151 votes). With the current electoral system, it is the leader of the party gaining a plurality of the votes in the Parliamentary elections who gets appointed Prime Minister. An administration may, at any time, seek a "vote of confidence"; conversely, a number of Members of Parilament may ask that a "vote of reproach" be taken. Both are rare occurrences with usually predictable outcomes as voting outside the party line happens very seldom.
For a list of Greek political parties, see List of political parties in Greece.
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Local government
Main article: Peripheries of Greece

Greece consists of 13 administrative regions known as peripheries, which subdivide further into the 51 prefectures (nomoi, singular - nomos):
• Attica:
o Attica
• Central Greece:
o Boeotia
o Euboea
o Evrytania
o Phocis
o Phthiotis
• Central Macedonia
o Chalcidice
o Imathia
o Kilkis
o Pella
o Pieria
o Serres
o Thessaloniki
• Crete
o Chania
o Heraklion
o Lasithi
o Rethymno
• East Macedonia and Thrace
o Drama
o Evros
o Kavala
o Rhodope
o Xanthi
• Epirus
o Arta
o Ioannina
o Preveza
o Thesprotia
• Ionian Islands
o Corfu
o Kefalonia
o Lefkada
o Zakynthos
• North Aegean
o Chios
o Lesbos
o Samos
• Peloponnese
o Arcadia
o Argolis
o Corinthia
o Laconia
o Messinia
• South Aegean
o Cyclades
o Dodecanese
• Thessaly
o Karditsa
o Larissa
o Magnesia
o Trikala
• West Greece
o Achaea
o Aetolia-Acarnania
o Elis
• West Macedonia
o Florina
o Grevena
o Kastoria
o Kozani

Beyond these one autonomous region exists: Mount Athos (Agio Oros - Holy Mountain), a monastic state under Greek sovereignty.
The 51 nomoi subdivide into 147 eparchies (singular eparchia), which contain 1,033 municipalities and communities: 900 urban municipalities (demoi) and 133 rural communities (koinotetes). Before 1999, Greece's local government structure featured 5,775 local authorities: 457 demoi and 5,318 koinotetes, subdivided into 12,817 localities (oikosmoi).
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Geography
Main article: Geography of Greece
The country consists of a large mainland at the southern end of the Balkans; the Peloponnesus peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth); and numerous islands (around 3,000), including Crete, Rhodes, Kos, Euboea and the Dodecanese and Cycladic groups of the Aegean Sea as well as the Ionian sea islands. Greece has more than 15,000 kilometres of coastline and a land boundary of 1,160 kilometres.


Map of Greece
About 80% of Greece consists of mountains or hills, thus making Greece one of the most montainous countries of Europe. Western Greece contains lakes and wetlands. Pindus, the central mountain range, has a maximum elevation of 2,636 m. The Pindus can be considered as a prolongation of the Dinaric Alps. The range continues by means of the Peloponnese, the islands of Kythera and Antikythera to find its final point in the island of Crete. (Actually the islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that once consisted an extension of the mainland).


Greece from orbit
The Central and Western Greece area contains high, steep peaks dissected by many canyons and other karstic landscapes, including the Meteora and the Vikos gorge the later being the second largest one on earth after the Grand Canyon in the US.
Mount Olympus forms the highest point in Greece at 2,919 m above sea level. Also northern Greece presents another high range, the Rhodope, located in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace; this area is covered with vast and thick century old forests like the famous Dadia.
Plains are mainly found in Eastern Thessaly, Central Macedonia and Thrace. Volos and Larissa are the two largest cities in the area of Thessaly.
Greece's climate is divided into three well defined classes the Mediterranean, Alpine and Temperate, the first one features mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures rarely reach extremes, although snowfalls do occur occasionally even in Athens, Cyclades or Crete during the winter. Alpine is found primarily in Western Greece (Epirus, Central Greece, Thessaly, Western Macedonia as well as central parts of Peloponessus like Achaea, Arkadia and parts of Lakonia where the Alpine range pass by). Finally the temperate climate is found in Central and Eastern Macedonia as well as in Thrace at places like Komotini, Xanthi and northern Evros; with cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers. It's worth to mention that Athens is located in a transition area between the Mediterranean and Alpine climate, thus finding that in its southern suburbs weather is of Mediterranean type while in the Northern suburbs of the Alpine type.
About 50% of Greek land is covered by forests with a rich varied vegetation which spans from Alpine coniferous to mediterranean type vegetation.
Seals, sea turtles and other rare marine life live in the seas around Greece, while Greece's forests provide a home to Western Europe's last brown bears and lynx as well as other species like Wolf, Roe Deer, Wild Goat, Fox and Wild Boar among others.
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Economy
Main article: Economy of Greece
Greece has a mixed capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about half of GDP. Tourism has great importance, providing a large portion of GDP and foreign exchange earnings. Greece also counts as a world leader in shipping (first in terms of ownership of vessels and third by flag registration) [2]. Greece figures prominently as a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 2.4% of its GNP. The export of manufactured goods, including telecommunications hardware and software, foodstuffs, and fuels accounts for a large part of the rest of Greek income.


Greek euro coins
The country has a high standard of living, ranking 24th on the 2005 Human Development Index and 22nd on The Economist's 2005 world-wide quality-of-life index[3]. The economy has improved steadily over the last few years, as the government tightened fiscal policy in the run-up to Greece's entry into the Eurozone on January 1, 2001(Greek euro coins). Average per capita income in 2004 was estimated at $22,000 [4]. Greece has an expanding services sector and telecommunications industry and has become one of the largest investors in the immediate region. Moreover, Greece now operates as a net importer of labour and foreign workers (mainly from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Pakistan, and Africa). People from these areas now account for 10% of the total population.
The main challenge facing the Greek economy is proving impossible to remedy; the public sector employs almost half the population. The vast majority of state employees are untrained and/or lack relevant skills (including teachers), thereby they slow down the economy and absorb collectively a vast proportion of Greek finances with no visible input. They owe they position to political favouritism, especially under the former PASOK government, they enjoy unlimited job protection and early pension rights (retirement occurs between 40yrs-50yrs).
Other challenges faced by the country include the reduction of unemployment, privatising of several state enterprises, social security reforms, overhauling the tax system, and minimising bureaucratic inefficiencies. Forecasts predicted economic growth of 4 - 4.5 % in 2004. Reducing the government deficit also remains a major issue, as it is currently running at nearly twice the Eurozone target of 3% of GDP. The new conservative government revealed to Eurostat that the previous figures supplied, which were the basis of Greek entry into the Eurozone, were incorrect. Under a negotiated agreement, the EU gave Greece two years (budgets of 2005 and 2006) to bring the economy in line with the criteria of the European stability pact.
The Bank of Greece, now a subsidiary of the European Central Bank, functions as the nation's central bank. This bank is not the same as the "National Bank of Greece", a commercial bank.
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Tourism
Main article: Tourism in Greece
In the year of 2004, Greece ranked 12th in terms of international tourist arrivals world wide with a figure of 14.180 Million visitors, some of which came for the 2004 Olympic Games. Since the promotion of Greece from the Olympic Games, the Government expected significant growth in the years to come. In the year 2005, tourism increased by approximately 14 percent, official figures show, and Greece was ranked as the most popular destination amongst Americans in the United States. In 2003, tourists spent an estimated 11 billion Euros, contributing 8% to Greece's GDP. Tourism in Greece has multiplied 50 times in the past 40 years and is expected to only get bigger in the next 10 years.
The main problem for Greece and its tourism industry is that many people are now going to places such as Turkey or Egypt were they can get a similar summer holiday for a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, the Government did not spend much on promoting tourism in Greece until the Olympic Games. But, the new Government spent 10 times more money since then and also they have now hired Greek singer, Elena Paparizou, as their official Ambassador as well as having released a new campaign with promising results. One suggestion is to focus now on the Winter side of Greece as Greece's tourism industry is really only a 6 month tourism season. If promoted correctly, Greece could almost double its tourist statistics since most of the 14 million tourists are accounted for in only 6 months of the year.
In 2006, over 30 Billion Dollars will be spent on Tourism by the government compared to 7 Billion in 2002 in order to remain competative with Turkey and Spain. Greece was also named the favourite place to visit in 2005 by Chinese voters in a Chinese survey. It is believed that with the recent outbreak of the Bird Flu in Turkey, people will divert to Greece for there summer holidays of 2006 which means a small boost in Tourism for Greece.
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Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Greece
Estimates regarding the ethnic makeup of Greece vary widely; immigrants who are not ethnic Greeks make up somewhere between 2% [5] and 8.5% [6] of the country's residents. Immigrants who are ethnic Greeks may make up about 2% of the population. The main minorites include Muslims (also referred to as Turks), Macedonian Slavs, Pomaks, and various Roma groups. A number of religious minorities exist, including the Muslim minority in western Thrace, which makes up about a third of that region's population.
About 60-65% of Greek immigrants have come from Albania (following the fall of communism) although some 200.000 have been documented as ethnic Greeks or homogeneis. The other principal nationalities are, according to residence permit data, Bulgarians (67.000), Romanians (29.000), Ukrainians (23.000), Pakistanis (17.000) and Georgians (15.000); overall, over 180 different nationalities have been recorded. The legal status of immigrants has been very tenuous since the 1990s (as throughout the European Union), with massive illegality. Since 1997 three legalization programmes were enacted by the Greek state [a fourth went through in 2005].
Several prominent Greek sportsmen migrated to Greece as ethnic Greeks from Albania and Georgia in the 1990s, including legendary weightlifters Pyrros Dimas and Kakhi Kakhiashvili.
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Religion
The majority of Greeks (95-98%) have at least nominal membership in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Greek Muslims make up about 1.3% of the population, and live primarily in Thrace. Greece also has some Roman Catholics, mainly in the city of Patras, Corfu, and the Cyclades islands of Syros, Paros, Tinos, and Naxos; some Protestants and some Jews, mainly in Thessaloniki (which was once a major Jewish city until the Holocaust). Some groups in Greece have started an attempt to reconstruct Hellenic polytheism, the ancient Greek pagan religion. See also: Greek Orthodox Church.
Prior to Ottoman rule, Greece was part of the Byzantine Empire. The civil and religious capital of the Empire was moved to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) by Constantine I. Since Constantine’s time the Orthodox Christian faith has flourished and spread throughout Eastern Europe. Even under Turkish rule and repeated attempts at prosletization - firstly by the Jesuits and then by the Protestants - Orthodox Christianity survived and flourished.
The role of the Orthodox Church in maintaining Greek ethnic and cultural identity during the 400 years of Ottoman rule, strengthened the bond between religion and the state. Most Greeks, even many non-practicing Christians, revere and respect the Orthodox Christian faith; even the majority of non-beliving, secular Greeks feel culturally attached to their Church. Most Greeks attend Church during the Major Feast days, and are emotionally attached to Orthodox Christianity as their 'national' religion.
The Greek Constitution reflects this relationship by guaranteeing absolute freedom of religion while still defining the "prevailing religion" of Greece as the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ. In practice, the Orthodox Church and the secular state are intimately involved with one another in certain areas. Joint approval is needed for the building of churches and the Church has even blocked the building of places of worship for other religions in Athens. Priests receive state salaries. The President of the Republic takes an oath on the Bible and Orthodox Christianity is given privileged place in religious studies in primary education. Non Greek Orthodox members of parliament are sworn in accordance to their own faith. The Church has also been allowed to keep its large portfolio of financial assets exempt from taxation and fiscal auditing.
Starting in January 2005, a series of highly publicised corruption scandals involving high rank church officials have led to many calls by secular Greeks for the complete separation of Church and State and greater control of Church assets. The calls comes mainly from the PASOK ranks but lack full credibility due to its purported wide-spread corruption while in government.
One small part of Greece, Mount Athos, is recognised by the Greek constitution as an autonomous monastic republic, although foreign relations remain the prerogative of the Greek state.
Spiritually, Mount Athos is under the Patriarchate of Constantinople and is therefore in communion with all the monasteries on Mount Athos and with the Orthodox Church based in various countries. One monastery has recently broken away and has formed a completely independent schism on the Holy Mountain -- Esphygmenou Monastery. Esphygmenou is composed of 117 Zealot monks who stubbornly oppose the head of the Church and do not commemorate him any more. They believe that they are the last remaining true Christians in the world and that Orthodoxy has been corrupted by having dialogue with other faiths. They also object to the lifting of the anathemas against the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960's by Patriarch Athenagoras.
Jews have been present in Greece for the last 2000 years. The earliest reference to a Greek Jew is in an inscription, dated c. 300-250 BCE found in Oropos, a small coastal town between Athens and Boeotia, and refers to him as "Moschos, son of Moschion the Jew" who was in all likelihood, a slave. The first Greek Jewish population became known as the Romaniotes and their language became known as Yevanic (from the Hebrew word for Greece: יון/Yavan). From the 16th century onwards, Salonica, a city in northern Greece, had one of the largest (mostly Sephardic by then) Jewish communities in the world and a solid rabbinical tradition. On the island of Crete, the Jews played an important part in the transport trade. During World War II, when Greece was occupied by Nazi Germany, 86% of the Greek Jews were murdered by the invading Axis and only a minority survived and most of them have emigrated to Israel. Greece's Jewish community today is estimated at 4,500.

Criminology
Criminology is the study of crime as a social phenomenon, including the causes and consequences of crime, criminal behavior, as well as the development of, and impact of laws. Research in criminology applies the scientific method to test hypotheses and ultimately develop theories that help explain the causes and other aspects of crime. Though both deal with crime, criminology differs from criminal justice in that latter focuses on the components of the justice system including police, courts, and corrections.

•
Positivist school
On the other hand, positivist criminologists take a different stance. They presume that criminal behavior is caused by psychological, social or other specific, determining factors that put some people at more of a predisposition towards crime.
Criminological positivism has three main strands: sociological, biological and psychological. Sociological positivism (the father of which is considered to be Emile Durkheim) postulates that societal factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures, or low levels of education can predispose people to crime.
Cesare Lombroso, an Italian prison doctor working in the late 19th century, was one of the largest contributors to biological positivism, which alleged that physiological traits such as the measurements of one's cheek bones or hairline, or a cleft palate, considered to be throwbacks to Neanderthal man, were indicative of "atavistic" criminal tendencies. This approach, influenced by the earlier theory of phrenology but also by Charles Darwin's evolutionism, has been superseded. Lombroso is sometimes regarded as the "father" of criminology.
Hans J. Eysenck (1964, 1977), a British psychologist, claimed that psychological factors such as Extraversion and Neuroticism made a person more likely to commit criminal acts. He also includes a Psychoticism dimension that includes traits similar to the psychopathic profile, developed by Cleckley and later Hare. He also based his model on early parental socialisation of the child; his approach bridges the gap between biological explanations and environmental or social learning based approaches (see eg social psychologists B.F. Skinner (1938) and Albert Bandura (1973)).
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Strain Theory
Based on the work of American sociologist Robert Merton, this theory suggests that mainstream culture, especially in America, is saturated with dreams of opportunity, freedom and prosperity; as Merton put it, the American Dream. Most people buy into this dream and it becomes a powerful cultural and psychological motivation. Merton also used the term anomie, but it meant something slightly different for him than it did for Durkheim; he saw the term as meaning a dichotomy between what society expected of its citizens, and what those citizens could actually achieve. Therefore, if the social structure of opportunities is unequal and prevents the majority from realising the dream, some of them will turn to illegitimate means (crime) in order to realise it. Others will retreat or drop out into deviant subcultures ("hobos": urban homeless drunks and drug abusers).
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British and American Sub-Cultural Theories
Following on from the Chicago School and Strain Theory, and also drawing on Edwin H. Sutherland's idea of differential association, American sub-cultural theorists focused on small cultural groups fragmenting away from the mainstream to form their own values and meanings about life. Some of these groups, especially from poorer areas where opportunities were scarce, might adopt criminal values and meanings. British sub-cultural theorists focused more heavily on the issue of class, where some criminal activities were seen as 'imaginary solutions' to the problem of belonging to a subordinate class.
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Symbolic Interactionism
Drawing on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and George Herbert Mead, sub-cultural theory and conflict theory, this school of thought focused on the relationship between the powerful state, media and conservative ruling elite on the one hand, and the less powerful groups on the other. The powerful groups had the ability to become the 'significant other' in the less powerful groups' processes of generating meaning. The former could to some extent impose their meanings on the latter, and therefore they were able to 'label' minor delinquent youngsters as criminal. These youngsters would often take on board the label, indulge in crime more readily and become actors in the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' of the powerful groups. Later developments in this set of theories were by Howard Becker and Edwin Lemert, in the mid 20th century; also by Stanley Cohen who developed the concept of "moral panic" (describing societal reaction to spectacular, alarming social phenomena such as post-World War Two youth cultures (eg. the Mods and Rockers in the UK in 1964), AIDS and football hooliganism.
Educational programs
There is now a huge number of undergraduate and postgraduate criminology degrees available around the world. The present popularity of such degrees may in part be due to criminal and police television dramas that capture people's imaginations, but could also be because of growing awareness as to the continuing importance of issues relating to law, rules, compliance, politics, terrorism, security, forensic science, the media, deviance, and punishment.
Criminology is an multi-disciplinary field; criminologists may have degrees in criminology, law, sociology, psychology, social policy, political science, anthropology, or other subjects. Criminology may involve crime statistics, criminal psychology, forensic science, law enforcement, and investigative methods; academically, these areas are somewhat marginal to criminology.

John Dryden

John Dryden
John Dryden (August 9, 1631 – May 12, 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright.
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Early Life
Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwinkle near Oundle in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was Rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus and Mary Dryden, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. As a boy Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh where it is also likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a King’s Scholar where his headmaster was Dr Richard Busby, a charismatic teacher and severe disciplinarian.<1> Westminster embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging a steadfast royalism and high Anglicanism. Whatever Dryden’s response to this was, he clearly respected the Headmaster and would later send two of his own sons to school at Westminster.
As a humanist grammar school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and the presentation of arguments for both sides of a given issue. This is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum also included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden’s capacity for assimilation. This was also to be exhibited in his later works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, and his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings from smallpox, alludes to the execution of King Charles I, which took place on 30 January 1649.
In 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge where he would have experienced a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood. The Master of Trinity was a Puritan preacher by the name of Thomas Hill who had been a rector in Dryden’s home village.<2> Though there is little specific information on Dryden’s undergraduate years, he would have followed the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. In June of the same year Dryden’s father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on.<3>
Arriving in London during the Protectorate, Dryden obtained work with Cromwell’s Secretary of State, John Thurloe. This appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by the Lord Chamberlain Sir Gilbert Pickering, Dryden’s cousin. Dryden was present on 23 November 1658 at Cromwell’s funeral where he processed with the Puritan poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), a eulogy on Cromwell’s death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, an authentic royalist panegyric. In this work the interregnum is illustrated as a time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order.
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Later Life and Career
After the Restoration Dryden quickly established himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day and he transferred his allegiances to the new government. Along with Astraea Redux, Dryden welcomed the new regime with two more panegyrics; To His Sacred Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation (1662), and To My Lord Chancellor (1662). These poems suggest that Dryden was looking to court a possible patron, but he was to instead make a living in writing for publishers not for the aristocracy, and thus ultimately for the reading public. These, and his other nondramatic poems, are occasional, that is they celebrate public events. Thus they are written for the nation rather than the self, and the Poet Laureate (as he would later become) is obliged to write a certain amount of these per annum.<4> In November 1662 Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society, and he was elected an early fellow. However, Dryden was inactive in Society affairs and in 1666 was expelled for non-payment of his dues.
On December 1 1663 Dryden married the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard; Lady Elizabeth. Dryden’s works occasionally contain outbursts against the married state but also celebrations of the same. Thus, little is known of the intimate side of his marriage. Lady Elizabeth however, was to bear him three sons and outlive him.
With the reopening of the theatres after the Puritan ban, Dryden busied himself with the composition of plays. His first play, The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663 and was not successful, but he was to have more success, and from 1668 on he was contracted to produce three plays a year for the King’s Company in which he was also to become a shareholder. During the 1660s and 70s theatrical writing was to be his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy, his best known work being Marriage A-la-Mode (1672), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All For Love (1678). Dryden was never satisfied with his theatrical writings and frequently suggested that his talents were wasted on unworthy audiences. He thus was making a bid for poetic fame off-stage. In 1667, around the same time his dramatic career began, he published Annus Mirabilis, a lengthy historical poem which described the events of 1666; the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation, and was crucial in his attaining the posts of Poet Laureate (1668) and historiographer royal (1670).
When the Great Plague closed the theatres in 1665 Dryden retreated to Wiltshire where he wrote Of Dramatick Poesie (1668), arguably the best of his unsystematic prefaces and essays. Dryden constantly defended his own literary practice, and Of Dramatick Poesie, the longest of his critical works, takes the form of a dialogue in which four characters – each based on a prominent contemporary, with Dryden himself as ‘Neander’- debate the merits of classical, French and English drama. The greater part of his critical works introduce problems which he is eager to discuss, and show the work of a writer of independent mind who feels strongly about his own ideas, ideas which demonstrate the incredible breadth of his reading. He felt strongly about the relation of the poet to tradition and the creative process, and his best heroic play Aureng-Zebe (1675) has a prologue which denounces the use of rhyme in serious drama. His play All for Love (1678), was written in blank verse, and was to immediately follow Aureng-Zebe.
Dryden’s greatest achievements were in satiric verse: the mock-heroic MacFlecknoe, a more personal product of his Laureate years, was a lampoon circulated in manuscript and an attack on the playwright Thomas Shadwell. It is not a belittling form of satire, but rather one which makes his object great in ways which are unexpected, transferring the ridiculous into poetry.<5> This line of satire continued with Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682). His other major works from this period are the religious poems Religio Laici (1682), written from the position of a member of the Church of England and The Hind and the Panther (1687) which celebrates his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
When in 1688 James was deposed, Dryden’s political and religious ethos left him out of favour at court. Thomas Shadwell succeeded him as Poet Laureate, and he was forced to give up his public offices and live by the proceeds of his pen. Dryden translated works by Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, Lucretius, and Theocritus, a task which he found far more satisfying than writing for the stage. In 1694 he began work on what would be his most ambitious and defining work as translator, The Works of Virgil (1697), which was published by subscription. The publication of the translation of Virgil was a national event and brought Dryden the sum of ₤1,400.<6> His final translations appeared in the volume Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), a series of episodes from Homer, Ovid, and Boccaccio, as well as modernized adaptations from Geoffrey Chaucer interspersed with Dryden’s own poems. The Preface to Fables is considered to be both a major work of criticism and one of the finest essays in English. As a critic and translator he was essential in making accessible to the reading English public literary works in the classical languages.
Dryden died in 1700 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden's influence as a poet was immense in his lifetime, and the considerable loss felt by the English literary community at his death was evident from the elegies which it inspired.<7> In the 18th century his poems were used as models by poets such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. In the 19th century his reputation waned, and it has yet to fully recover outside of specialist circles. One of his greatest champions, T.S. Eliot, wrote that he was ‘the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the eighteenth century’, and that ‘we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden.’<8>

HIV

Stylized rendering of a cross section
of the human immunodeficiency virus
Virus classification

Group: Group VI (ssRNA-RT)

Family: Retroviridae

Genus: Lentivirus

Species: Human immunodeficiency virus 1
Species: Human immunodeficiency virus 2

The human immunodeficiency virus, commonly called HIV, is a retrovirus that primarily infects vital components of the human immune system such as CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. It also directly and indirectly destroys CD4+ T cells. As CD4+ T cells are required for the proper functioning of the immune system, when enough CD4+ cells have been destroyed by HIV, the immune system barely works, leading to AIDS. HIV also directly attacks organs, such as the kidneys, the heart and the brain leading to acute renal failure, cardiomyopathy, dementia and encephalopathy. Many of the problems faced by people infected with HIV results from the failure of the immune system to protect them from opportunistic infections and cancers.
HIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucus membrane with a bodily fluid such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid or breast milk. This transmission can come in the form of: penetrative (anal or vaginal) sex; oral sex; blood transfusion; contaminated needles; exchange between mother and infant, during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding; or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.
AIDS is thought to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century and it is now a global epidemic. At the end of 2004, UNAIDS estimated that nearly 40 million people were currently living with HIV. The World Health Organization estimated that the AIDS epidemic had claimed more than 3 million people and that 5 million people had acquired HIV in the same year. Currently it is estimated that 28 million people have died and that it is set to infect 90 million Africans alone, resulting in a minimum estimate of 18 million orphans in the African continent alone.
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Introduction
In 1983, scientists led by Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in France first discovered the virus that causes AIDS (Barré-Sinoussi et al., 1983). They called it lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). A year later, Robert Gallo and Marvin Reitz of the United States confirmed the discovery of the virus, and they named it human T lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III) (Popovic et al., 1984). In 1986, both names were dropped in favour of the term human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Coffin, 1986).
HIV is a member of the genus lentivirus (ICTVdb, 61.0.6), part of the family of retroviridae (ICTVdb, 61). Lentiviruses have many common morphologies and biological properties. Many species are infected by lentiviruses, which are characteristically responsible for long duration illnesses associated with a long period of incubation (Lévy, 1993). Lentiviruses are transmitted as single-stranded negatively-sensed enveloped RNA viruses. Upon infection of the target-cell, the viral RNA genome is converted to double-stranded DNA by a virally encoded reverse transcriptase which is present in the virus particle. This viral DNA is then integrated into the cellular DNA for replication using cellular machinery. Once the virus enters the cell, two pathways are possible: either the virus becomes latent and the infected cell continues to function or the virus becomes active, replicates and a large number of virus particles are liberated which can infect other cells.
Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the more virulent and easily transmitted, and is the source of the majority of HIV infections throughout the world; HIV-2 is largely confined to west Africa (Reeves and Doms, 2002). Both species originated in west and central Africa, jumping from primates to humans in a process known as zoonosis. HIV-1 has evolved from a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVcpz) found in the chimpanzee subspecies, Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Gao et al., 1999). HIV-2 crossed species from a different strain of SIV, found in sooty mangabey monkeys in Guinea-Bissau (Reeves and Doms, 2002).
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Transmission
Since the beginning of the epidemic, three main transmission routes of HIV have been identified:
• Sexual route. The majority of HIV infections are acquired through unprotected sexual relations. Sexual transmission occurs when there is contact between sexual secretions of one partner with the rectal, genital or mouth mucous membranes of another. The probability of transmission per act is between 1 in 53 to 1 in 10,000 for the case of receptive vaginal sex (Pilcher et al., 2004), 1 in 8000 in the case of insertive vaginal sex, 1 in 1000 in the case of insertive anal sex, and between 1 in 100 to 1 in 30 in the case of receptive anal sex [1].
• Blood or blood product route. This transmission route is particularly important for intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions and blood products. Health care workers (nurses, laboratory workers, doctors, etc) are also concerned, although more rarely. Also concerned by this route are people who give and receive tattoos and piercings.
• Mother-to-child route. The transmission of the virus from the mother to the child can occur in utero during the last weeks of pregnancy and at childbirth. Breast feeding also presents a risk of infection for the baby. In the absence of treatment, the transmission rate between the mother and child was 20%. However, where treatment is available, combined with the availability of Cesarian section, this has been reduced to 1%.
HIV has been found in the saliva, tears and urine of infected individuals, but due to the low concentration of virus in these biological liquids, the risk is considered to be negligible.
The use of physical barriers such as the latex condom is widely advocated to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV. Recently, it has been proposed that male circumcision may reduce the risk of HIV transmission (Siegfried et al., 2005), but many experts believe that it is premature to recommend male circumcision as part of HIV prevention programs (WHO, 2005).
For more details on this topic, see AIDS prevention
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The clinical course of HIV-1 infection


Figure 1. Graph showing HIV virus and CD4+ levels over the course of an untreated infection
Infection with HIV-1 is associated with a progressive loss of CD4+ T-cells. This rate of loss can be measured and is used to determine the stage of infection. The loss of CD4+ T-cells is linked with an increase in viral load. The clinical course of HIV-infection generally includes three stages: primary infection, clinical latency and AIDS (Figure 1). HIV plasma levels during all stages of infection range from just 50 to 11 million virions per ml (Piatak et al., 1993).
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Primary Infection
Primary, or acute infection is a period of rapid viral replication that immediately follows the individual's exposure to HIV. During primary HIV infection, most individuals (80 to 90 %) develop an acute syndrome characterised by flu-like symptoms of fever, malaise, lymphadenopathy, pharyngitis, headache, myalgia, and sometimes a rash (Kahn and Walker, 1998). Within an average of three weeks after transmission of HIV-1, a broad HIV-1 specific immune response occurs that includes seroconversion. Because of the nonspecific nature of these illnesses, it is often not recognized as a sign of HIV infection. Even if patients go to their doctors or a hospital, they will often be misdiagnosed as having one of the more common infectious diseases with the same symptoms. Since not all patients develop it, and since the same symptoms can be caused by many other common diseases, it cannot be used as an indicator of HIV infection. However, recognizing the syndrome is important because the patient is much more infectious during this period
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Clinical Latency
As a result of the strong immune defense, the number of viral particles in the blood stream declines and the patient enters clinical latency (Figure 1). Clinical latency is variable in length and can vary between two weeks and 20 years. During this phase HIV is active within lymphoid organs where large amounts of virus become trapped in the follicular dendritic cells (FDC) network early in HIV infection. The surrounding tissues that are rich in CD4+ T-cells also become infected, and viral particles accumulate both in infected cells and as free virus. Individuals who have entered into this phase are still infectious.
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The declaration of AIDS
AIDS is the most severe manifestation of infection with HIV. Acute HIV infection progresses over time to clinical latent HIV infection and then to early symptomatic HIV infection and later, to AIDS, which is identified on the basis of certain infections.
For more details on this topic, see AIDS symptomology.
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HIV structure and genome



Diagram of HIV
HIV is different in structure from previously described retroviruses. It is around 120 nm in diameter (120 billionths of a meter; around 60 times smaller than a red blood cell) and roughly spherical.
HIV-1 is composed of two copies of single-stranded RNA enclosed by a conical capsid, which is in turn surrounded by a plasma membrane that is formed from part of the host-cell membrane. Other enzymes contained within the virion particle include reverse transcriptase, integrase, and protease.
HIV has several major genes coding for structural proteins that are found in all retroviruses, and several nonstructural ("accessory") genes that are unique to HIV. The gag gene provides the physical infrastructure of the virus; pol provides the basic enzymes by which retroviruses reproduce; the env gene supplies the proteins essential for viral attachment and entry into a target cell. The accessory proteins tat, rev, nef, vif, vpr, and vpu enhance virus production. Although called accessory proteins, tat and rev are essential for virus replication. In some strains of HIV, a mutation causes the production of an alternate accessory protein, Tev, from the fusion of tat, rev, and env.
The gp120 and gp41 proteins, both encoded by the env gene, enable the virus to attach to and fuse with target cells to initiate the infectious cycle. Both, especially gp120, have been considered as targets of future treatments or vaccines against HIV.
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HIV tropism
The term viral tropism refers to the cell type that the virus infects and replicates in. HIV can infect a variety of cells such as CD4+ helper T-cells and macrophages that express the CD4 molecule on its surface. HIV-1 entry to macrophages and T helper cells is mediated not only through interaction of the virion envelope glycoproteins (gp120) with the CD4 molecule on the target cells but also with its chemokine coreceptors. Macrophage (M-tropic) strains of HIV-1, or non-syncitia-inducing strains (NSI) use the beta-chemokine receptor CCR5 for entry and are thus able to replicate in macrophages and CD4+ T-cells. The normal ligands for this receptor, RANTES, macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1-beta and MIP-1-alpha, are able to suppress HIV-1 infection in vitro. This CCR5 coreceptor is used by almost all primary HIV-1 isolates regardless of viral genetic subtype. Indeed, macrophages play a key role in several critical aspects of HIV disease. They appear to be the first cells infected by HIV and perhaps the very source of HIV production when CD4+ cells are markedly depleted in the patient. Macrophages and microglial cells are the cells infected by HIV in the central nervous system. In tonsils and adenoids of HIV-infected patients, macrophages fuse into multinucleated giant cells that produce copious amounts of virus. T-tropic isolates, or syncitia-inducing (SI) strains replicate in primary CD4+ T-cells as well as in macrophages and use the alpha-chemokine receptor, CXCR4, for entry. The alpha-chemokine, SDF-1, a ligand for CXCR4, suppresses replication of T-tropic HIV-1 isolates. It does this by down regulating the expression of CXCR4 on the surface of these cells. Viruses that use only the CCR5 receptor are termed R5, those that only use CXCR4 are termed X4, and those that use both, X4R5. However, the use of coreceptor alone does not explain viral tropism, as not all R5 viruses are able to use CCR5 on macrophages for a productive infection (Coakley et al., 2005).
HIV can also infect a subtype of dendritic cells (Knight et al., 1990), MDC-1, which probably constitute a major reservoir that maintains infection when T helper cell numbers have declined to extremely low levels.


Figure 2. The HIV replication cycle


Figure 3. The immature and mature forms of HIV
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Viral entry to the cell
The interaction between the glycoprotein gp120 on the HIV virion and its receptor, CD4 on the target cell, provokes conformational changes in gp120. This exposes a region of gp120, the V3 loop, which binds to a cytokine receptor on the target cell, such as CCR5 or CXCR4 depending on the strain of HIV. Without a coreceptor, fusion does not take place, explaining why HIV favors some types of CD4+ cells over others.
The change in gp120's shape also exposes a portion of the gp41 glycoprotein, which was previously buried in the viral membrane and loosely bound to gp120. A fusion peptide within gp41 causes the fusion of the viral envelope and the host-cell envelope, allowing the capsid to enter the target cell. The exact mechanism by which gp41 causes the fusion is still largely unknown (Chan and Kim, 1998; Wyatt and Sodroski, 1998).
Once HIV has bound to the target cell, the HIV RNA and various enzymes, including but not limited to reverse transcriptase, integrase and protease, are injected into the cell.
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Viral replication and transcription
Once the viral capsid has entered the cell, an enzyme called reverse transcriptase liberates the single-stranded (+)RNA from the attached viral proteins and copies it into a negatively sensed viral complementary DNA of 9 kb pairs (cDNA) (Figure 2). This process of reverse transcription is extremely error prone and it is during this step that mutations (such as drug resistance) are likely to arise. The reverse transcriptase then makes a complementary DNA strand to form a double-stranded viral DNA intermediate (vDNA). This new vDNA is then transported into the nucleus. The integration of the proviral DNA into the host genome is carried out by another viral enzyme called integrase. This is called the latent stage of HIV infection (Zheng et al., 2005).
To actively produce virus, certain transcription factors need to be present in the cell. The most important is called NF-kB (NF Kappa B) and is present once the T cells becomes activated. This means that those cells most likely to be killed by HIV are in fact those currently fighting infection.
The production of the virus is regulated, like that of many viruses. Initially the integrated provirus is copied to mRNA which is then spliced into smaller chunks. These small chunks produce the regulatory proteins Tat (which encourages new virus production) and Rev. As Rev accumulates it gradually starts to inhibit mRNA splicing (Pollard and Malim, 1998). At this stage the structural proteins Gag and Env are produced from the full-length mRNA. Additionally the full-length RNA is actually the virus genome, so it binds to the Gag protein and is packaged into new virus particles.
Interestingly, HIV-1 and HIV-2 appear to package their RNA differently; HIV-1 will bind to any appropriate RNA whereas HIV-2 will preferentially bind to the mRNA which was used to create the Gag protein itself. This may mean that HIV-1 is better able to mutate (HIV-1 causes AIDS faster than HIV-2 and is the majority species of the virus).
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Viral assembly and release
The final step of the viral cycle is the assembly of new HIV-1 virions, begins at the plasma membrane of the host cell. The Env polyprotein (gp160) goes through the endoplasmic reticulum and is transported to the Golgi complex where it is cleaved by protease and processed into the two HIV envelope glycoproteins gp41 and gp120. These are transported to the plasma membrane of the host cell where gp41 anchors the gp120 to the membrane of the infected cell. The Gag (p55) and Gag-Pol (p160) polyproteins also associate with the inner surface of the plasma membrane along with the HIV genomic RNA as the forming virion begins to bud from the host cell. Maturation either occurs in the forming bud or in the immature virion after it buds from the host cell. During maturation, HIV proteases (proteinases) cleave the polyproteins into individual functional HIV proteins and enzymes. The various structural components then assemble to produce a mature HIV virion (Gelderblom, 1997). This step can be inhibited by drugs. The virus is then able to infect another cell.
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Genetic variability of HIV


Figure 4. The phylogenetic tree of the SIV and HIV viruses (click on image for a detailed description).


Figure 5. Map showing HIV-1 subtype prevalence. The bigger the pie chart, the more infections are present.
One of the major characteristics of HIV is its high genetic variability as a result of its fast replication cycle and the high error rate and recombinogenic properties of reverse transcriptase. This means that different genomic combinations may be generated within an individual who is infected by genetically different HIV strains. Recombination results when a cell is simultaneously infected by two different strains of HIV and one RNA transcript from two different viral strains are encapsidated into the same virion particle. This virion then infects a new cell where it undergoes replication. During this phase, the reverse transcriptase, by jumping back and forth between the two different RNA templates, will generate a newly synthesized retroviral DNA sequence that is a recombinant between the two parental genomes. This recombination is most obvious when it occurs between subtypes.
Three groups of HIV-1 have been identified on the basis of differences in env: M, N and O (Thomson et al., 2002) (Figure 4). Group M is the most prevalent and is subdivided into eight subtypes, based on the whole genome, that are each geographically distinct (Carr et al., 1998). The most prevalent are subtypes B (found predominantly in North America and Europe), A and D (found predominantly in Africa), and C (found predominantly in Africa and Asia) (Figure 5); these subtypes form branches in the phylogenetic tree representing the lineage of the M group of HIV-1 (Figure 4). Coinfection with distinct subtypes gives rise to circulating recombinant forms (CRFs).
In 2000, the last year in which an analysis of global subtype prevalence was made, 47.2% of infections worldwide were of subtype C, 26.7% were of subtype A/CRF02_AG, 12.3% were of subtype B, 5.3% were of subtype D, 3.2% were of CRF_AE, and the remaining 5.3% were composed of other subtypes and CRFs (Osmanov et al., 2000) (Figure 5). Almost 95% of all HIV research currently taking place is focused on subtype B, while a few laboratories focus on other subtypes.
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Treatment
HIV infection is a chronic infectious disease that can be treated, but not yet cured. There are effective means of preventing complications and delaying, but not preventing, progression to AIDS. At the present time, not all persons infected with HIV have progressed to AIDS, but it is generally believed that the majority will. People with HIV infection need to receive education about the disease and treatment so that they can be active partners in decision making with their health care provider.
A combination of several antiretroviral agents, termed Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy HAART, has been highly effective in reducing the number of HIV particles in the blood stream (as measured by a blood test called the viral load). This can improve T-cell counts. This is not a cure for HIV, and people on HAART with suppressed levels of HIV can still transmit the virus to others through sex or sharing of needles. There is good evidence that if the levels of HIV remain suppressed and the CD4 count remains greater than 200, then the quality and length of life can be significantly improved and prolonged. Improved antiretroviral inhibitors against proteins such as Reverse transcriptase, Integrase and Tat are being researched and developed. One of the most promising new therapies is a new class of drugs called fusion or entry inhibitors.
As yet, no vaccine has been developed to prevent HIV infection or disease in people who are not yet infected with HIV, but the potential worldwide public health benefits of such a preventive vaccine are vast. Researchers in many countries are seeking to produce such a vaccine, including through the International AIDS vaccine initiative.
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Epidemiology


Figure 6. The adult HIV prevalence at the end of 2004
UNAIDS and the WHO estimated that between 36 and 44 million people around the world were living with HIV in December 2004 [2]. It was estimated that during 2004, between 4.3 and 6.4 million people were newly infected with HIV and between 2.8 and 3.5 million people with AIDS died (UNAIDS, 2004). Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the worst-affected region, with 23.4 million to 28.4 million people living with HIV at the end of 2004. Just under two thirds (64%) of all people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, as are more than three quarters (76%) of all women living with HIV. [3] South & South East Asia are second most affected with 15%. AIDS accounts for the deaths of 500,000 children.
The epidemic is not homogeneous within regions with some countries more afflicted than others (Figure 6). Even at the country level there are wide variations in infection levels between different areas. The number of people living with HIV continues to rise in all parts of the world, despite strenuous prevention strategies.

Tehran


Map of Iran and surrounding lands, showing location of Tehran


Tehran is Iran's commercial, economic, and political capital.
Tehran (also transcribed Teheran) (تهران in Persian), population 9,000,000 (metropolitan: 14,000,000), and a land area of 254 square miles, the capital of Iran (Persia) and the center of Tehran Province. Tehran is located at 35°40′N 51°25′E. [1]
More than half of the country's industry is based there. Industries include the manufacturing of cars, electronics and electrical equipment, weaponry, textiles, sugar, cement, and chemical products. It is also a leading center for the sale of carpets and furniture. There is an oil refinery nearby.
Tehran is a sprawling city at the foot of the Alborz mountain range with an immense network of highways unparalleled in western Asia. It is also the hub of the country's railway network. The city has numerous large museums, art centers, palace complexes and cultural centers. Besides Persians there are Azeri, Armenian, Kurdish and Jewish communities in Tehran. 98.3 percent of Tehran's residents speak Persian [2]. The city is dotted with mosques. There are some churches and synagogues.
The word Tehran in Persian means "warm mountain slope" (دامنه گرم).
•
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History
Excavations place the existence of settlements in Tehran as far back as 6000 BC. Tehran was well known as a village in the 9th century, but was less well-known than the city of Rages which was flourishing nearby in the pre-Mongol era. In the 13th century, following the destruction of Rages by Mongols, many of its inhabitants fled to Tehran. In some sources of the Mongol era the city is mentioned as "Rages's Tehran" (طهرانِ ری). The city is later mentioned in Hamdollah Mostowfi's Nezhat ol-Gholoob (written in 1340) as a famous village.


Toopkhaneh Square, Tehran, the early to mid-1900s.
No one knows for sure how the city got its name, but one accepted explanation is that Tehran means "a warm place", as opposed to "a cool place", called Shemiran - a cooler district in northern Tehran. Don Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, a Castilian ambassador, was probably the first European to visit Tehran, stopping in July 1404, while on a journey to Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan) and the Mongol capital at the time. At this time, the city of Tehran was unwalled.
Tehran became a residence of the Safavid rulers in the 17th century. Tahmasp I built a bazaar and a wall around the city, but it somewhat fell out of favour after Abbas I turned sick when he was passing the city to go to a war with the Uzbeks.
In the early 18th century, Karim Khan Zand ordered a palace, a harem, and a government office to be built in Tehran, possibly to declare the city his capital, but later moved his government to Shiraz. Tehran finally became the capital of Persia in 1795, when the Qajar king Agha Mohammad Khan was crowned in the city. It remains the capital to this day.
During World War II, British and Soviet troops entered the city. Tehran was the site of the Teheran Conference in 1943, attended by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.
On September 8, 1978, demonstrations against the Shah led to riots. The army reportedly opened fire on the demonstrating mob. Martial law was installed in the wake of the ensuing revolution, from 1978-80.
During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Tehran was the scene of repeated Scud missile attacks and air strikes against random residential and industrial targets within the city, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties.
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About Tehran
The Azadi Tower is the first thing visitors come across when coming from the Mehr-abad International Airport. The tower has become an icon of sorts for Tehran and Iran.
Tehran suffers from extremely serious traffic congestion and pollution problems. Respiratory ailments such as asthma are now very common. Tehran has become so congested in the past 10 years, that the government has considered moving the nation's capital to another city to alleviate these problems and help de-centralize the economy and population. This is especially true in light of predictions of an imminent major earthquake in Tehran, situated on top of three major faultlines. But because Iran's economy and politics is so centralized, millions have little choice but to live and work in Tehran despite these problems.

Borj-e Sefid (The White Tower) in Pasdaran Ave. district.
Milad Tower, Gisha district.
Keshavarz Blvd (formerly Elizabeth Blvd), Laleh Park district.

Argentina district.
The Peacock Throne of the Persian Shahs can be found in Tehran's Golestan Palace. Some of the important museums are National Museum of Iran, Sa'dabad Palaces Complex, Glassware and Ceramics Museum of Iran, The Carpet Museum of Iran, Tehran's Underglass painting Museum, and Niavaran Palace Complex. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is also appealing to many because it features the works of great artists such as Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.
The huge Tehran International Fair organises many expositions. Its book expositions are especially popular. Tehran is also the seat of Iran's Parliament (the Majles). And Tehran is also home to the world's fourth tallest free standing structure, the Milad Tower.
The Tehran Stock Exchange which is a full member of the FIBV and a founding member of the Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges, was one of the world's best performing stock exchanges in recent years.[3]. But since the election win of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it has seen a sharp fall and is now seen as one of the least profitable exchanges in the world.
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Neighborhoods and Districts of Tehran
The city of Tehran is divided into 22 municipal districts, each with its own administrative centers. Within these 22 districts, Tehran contains the following major neighborhoods :
Abbas Abad, Afsariyeh, Amir Abad, Bagh Feiz, Baharestan, Darakeh, Darband, Dardasht, Dar Abad, Dehkadeh Olampik, Ekhtiyariyeh, Elahiyeh, Evin, Gholhak, Gisha, Gomrok, Hasan Abad, Jamaran, Jannat Abad, Javadiyeh, Jomhuri, Jordanne, Narmak, Navvab, Nazi Abad, Niavaran, Park Shahr, Pasdaran, Punak, Ray, Sa'adat Abad, Sadeghiyeh, Shahrara, Shahreziba, Shahrak-e Gharb, Shemiran, Tehranpars, Vanak, Yaft Abad, Yusef Abad, etc.
For full list, see List of the localities around Tehran.
[edit]
The older neighborhoods of Tehran
Tehran's old city fabric changed dramatically during the first Pahlavi era. Some of the older remaining districts of Tehran are: Udlajan, Sangelaj, Bazaar, Chaleh Meydan, Dowlat. Chaleh Meydan is the oldest neighborhood of the aforementioned.
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Transportation


Tehran has five Metro lines.
In 2001 a metro system that had been in planning since the 1970s opened the first two of seven envisaged lines -- even though the city is prone to earthquakes. Work has been slow and coverage remains very limited. Development of the Tehran metro system had been interrupted by the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Problems arising from the late completion of the metro led to buses taking on the role of the metro lines, serving mainly long distance routes. Taxis filled the void for localised routes, not carrying passengers to their final destinations but operating along main routes and arteries. This has all led to extreme congestion and air pollution within the city.
Tehran is served by Mehrabad International Airport, the old airport which doubles as a military base located in the western part of the city, and Imam Khomeini International Airport, 50 kilometers south, which handles flights from the Persian Gulf but which will eventually handle all international flights. The new airport is overdue and over budget, and Britain and Australia have warned their nationals not to use it because of safety concerns.
Tehran also has a central train station with connecting services round the clock to various cities in the country. There are four bus terminals that also provide connections at low fares. These are the South, East, West, and Bei-haghi Park-Drive Terminals.
While the center of the city contains the government ministries and headquarters, the commercial centers are more located toward Taleghani Ave. and Beheshti Ave. further north. Although administratively separate, Rey, Shemiran, and Karaj are often considered part of the larger Tehran metropolitan area.
See also: List of Tehran metro stations
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Colleges and universities


Tehran University, with 32,000 students, is Iran's largest university.
Ever since the establishment of Darolfonoon, Tehran has amassed an abundance of institutions of higher education. Some of these institutions have played crucial roles in the unfolding of Iranian political events. There are 45 major colleges and universities in total today in Tehran, listed below:
• K.N.Toosi University of Technology
• Allameh Tabatabaii University
• Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) (website)
• Alzahra University (website)
• Baghiatollah University
• Imam Hossein University
• Imam Sadegh University
• Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM) (website)
• Iran University of Medical Sciences
• Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST)(website)
• Islamic Azad University of Karaj
• Islamic Azad University of Roodehen
• Islamic Azad University of Tehran-Medical Sciences
• Islamic Azad University of Tehran-North
• Islamic Azad University of Tehran-South
• Islamic Azad University of Tehran-Central
• Islamic Azad University of Tehran-Region one
• Shahed University
• Shahid Beheshti University (website)
• Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (website)
• Sharif University of Technology (webiste)
• Tarbiat Modares University(website)
• Tehran University of Medical Sciences
• Tehran University of Tarbiat Moallem
• University of The Arts
• University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences
• University of Tehran (website)
• University of Emam Reza
• Hadith College of Tehran
• Imam Ali University for Army Officers
• Comprehensive University of Technology
• Tehran University of Applied Science and Technology
• Tehran College of Environment
• Bagher Aloloum University
• International University of Iran
• Iran College of Tele-communications
• Medical University for the Islamic Republic of Iran's Army
• NAJA University of Police
• School of Economic Affairs (SEA)
• School of International Relations (SIR)
• Shahed University of Medical Sciences
• Shahid Sattari University of Aeronautical Engineering
• University of Islamic Sects
• The Research Institute of The Petroleum Industry
• Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute

Tehran also contains Iran's largest military academy, and several religious schools and seminaries.
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Sports
Tehran was the first city in the Middle East to host the Asian Games. The 7th Asian Summer Games in 1974, was held with the participation of 2363 athletes and officials from 25 countries.
Tehran is also the site of Iran's national football stadium on Azadi Sport Complex with 100000 seating capacity. Many of the top matches of Iran's Premier League are held here. In 2005, FIFA ordered Iran limit spectators allowed into Azadi stadium because of a fatal crush and inadequate safety procedures.


The Swiss (Poma) built gondolas that carry tourists and skiers to Tochal mountain.
Within 10 minutes of driving distance from Tehran lies a ski resort. Tochal is the world's fifth highest ski resort at over 3730m at its highest 7th station. The resort was completed in 1976 shortly before the overthrow of the Shah.
Here, one must first ride the eight km (five mile) long gondola lift which covers a huge vertical. The 7th station has three slopes. The resort's longest slope is the south side U shaped slope which goes from the 7th station to 5th station. The other two slopes are located on the north side of the 7th station. Here, there are two parallel chair ski lifts that go up to 3900m near Tochal's peak (at 4000m), rising higher than the gondola 7th station station. This altitude is higher than any of the European resorts.
From the Tochal peak, one has a spectacular view of the Alborz range, including the 5671 metre (18606 ft) high Mt. Damavand, a dormant volcano.
At the bottom of the lifts in a valley behind the Tochal peak is Tochal hotel, located at 3500m altitude. From there a T lift takes skiers up the 3800 metres of Shahneshin peak, where the third slope of Tochal is.
Tochal 7th station has skiing eight months of the year. But there are also some glaciers and year-round snow fields near Tehran where skiing began in 1938, thanks to the efforts of two German railway engineers. Today, 12 ski resorts operate in Iran, but the most famous are Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak, all within one to three hours of Tehran.
See also: Sports in Iran
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Football
In football (soccer), Tehran is host to six football clubs in Iran's Premier Football League, namely:
• Esteghlal
• Saba Battery
• Saipa
• Rah Ahan
• Pas Tehran
• Pirouzi/Persepolis

These clubs have on numerous occasions won Asian titles, and some of their players are known internationally.
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Outdoor


The towering Alborz mountains rising above modern Elahiyeh district and its green neighborhoods.
• Tochal Ski resort
• Darband hiking trail
• Chitgar Park
• Mellat Park
• Laleh Park
• Jamshidieh Park
• Niavaran Park
• Sa'ei Park
• Shahr-e Bazi amusement park.
• Shatranj Park
• Darabad hiking trail
• Darakeh hiking trail
• Jahan-e Kudak Park
• Azadi Sports complex
• Enghelab Sports Complex and Golf course
• Several caves, springs, and waterfalls outisde Tehran.
• Latyan Lake
• Lavizan Forest Park
• Vardavard Forest Park
• Khajeer National Park
• Kavir National Park
• Tar Lake
• Amir Kabir Lake
• Lar Protected Natural Habitat
• Varjeen Protected Natural Habitat
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Culture
Tehran, as Iran's showcase and historical capital city, has a wealth of cultural attractions, some of which are listed below.

Azadi Sport Complex

Bagh-e Melli (National Garden)
A bowl from the 4th Millennium BCE in the National Museum of Iran.

Iran's National Rug Gallery

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Palaces


Columns on the side of the Green Palace located inside the Sa'd Abad palace Complex.
• Golestan Palace and Takht-e Marmar. (website)
• Niavaran Palace Complex (website)
• Sadabad Palace (website)
• Saltanat Abad Palace
• Firouzeh Palace, (which belongs to Tehran's Zoroastrian community)
• Soleymaniyeh Palace
• Baharestan Palace, (where Iran's first parliament was located at)
• Morvarid Palace, Karaj, designed by The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. [4]
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Museums
• Sa'd Abad Gallery of Fine Arts
• Glassware Museum of Tehran
• Iran's National Rug Gallery (website)
• Reza Abbasi Museum
• Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (website)
• Tehran Theater of the Performing Arts (Te'atr e Shahr)
• Talar Vahdat Theater
• National Museum of Iran, (website)
• Dar-abad Nature & Wildlife Museum
• National Library of Iran
• Malek National Library
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Religious centers
• Soltani Mosque, built by Fath Ali Shah
• Atiq Mosque, built in 1663.
• Mo'ezz o-dowleh mosque, built by Fath Ali Shah
• Haj Seyd Azizollah mosque, built by Fath Ali Shah
• Al-javad mosque, Iran's first modernist design mosque.
• The Old Sepahsalar mosque, another prominent Qajar era mosque.
• The new Sepahsalar mosque (Madreseh e Motahari)
• Filsuf o-dowleh Mosque, Qajar era
• Moshir ol-Saltaneh Mosque, Qajar era
• Mo'ayyer ol-Mamalik Mosque, Qajar era
• Shahr Banu Mausopleum
• Javan-mard Qassab Mausoleum, a pre-Islamic semi-mythical hero
• Dozens of Imam-zadeh shrines, hundreds of years old, including that of Imam Zadeh Saleh.
• Dozens of Saqa Khanehs: traditional places of prayer
• Several Tekyehs: traditional places for mourning Muharram ceremonies for Husayn ibn Ali.
• Ibn Babviyeh cemetery, where many Iranian giants such as Takhti and Ali Akbar Dehkhoda are buried.
• Zahir o-dowleh cemetery, where many Iranian giants of art and culture such as Iraj Mirza, Mohammad Taghi Bahar, Forough Farrokhzad, Abolhasan Saba, Ruhollah Khaleghi, and Darvish-khan are buried.
• Kordan Tomb, Seljuqi era, Karaj.
• Maydanak Tomb, 13th century, Karaj
• The Polish cemetery 1-north of Tehran in British Gholhak garden, where numerous World War II western allied soldiers are buried. 2- polish cemetery (catholic cemetery)Dulab south of Tehran
• orthodox Cemetery.Dulab/The Russian unknown soldier's Tomb(Cenotaph) is located there with red star over it
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Churches
• Surep Georg Church, 1790
• Thaddeus Bartoqimus Church, 1808
• Tatavus Church, from the Qajar era
• Enjili Church, 1867
• Assyrian Church


Khalvat-e Karimkhani, Golestan Palace.

Tehran's WW2 Cemetery of Allied Forces
Toghrol Tower, 13th century.
National Library of Iran, Niavaran branch.
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Castles and Forts
• Arzhang Fort, Taleqan, 1149CE
• Iraj Fort, Varamin
• Gol e Khandan Fort, Rudehen, Sassanid era
• Rashkan Fort, Ray, Parthian era
• Tabbarok Fort, Abbasid era
• Sorkheh-Hesar Fort, Seljuqi era.
• Kei-Ghobad Fort, Taleqan, Ismaili era
• Gabri Fort, Parthian era, Ray.
• Several other forts and castle ruins, such as Ghal'eh Dokhtar Tang Goseel, near Karaj. Like all the other forts of this area, these have been ruined by earthquakes. Seljuqi era.
• Harun Prison. Sassanid era. South of Tehran.
• Bagh e Melli foreign ministry compound.
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Traditional Houses
Dozens of houses of antiquity with splendid traditional architectural design remain standing in Tehran today. Most are from the Qajar era. Some of these are:
• Etehadiyeh House, Qajar era
• Amir Bahador House, Qajar era
• Emam Jomeh House, 1863CE
• Amin ol-Soltan House, Qajar era
• Shaghaghi (Kushak) House, Qajar era
• Emarat e Bagh e Ferdows, Qajar era
• Emarat Farmaniyeh, Qajar era
• Shahid Modarres House, Uladjan district.
• Vothuq House, 1837CE
• Moshir o-Dowleh Pir Nia House
However, there exist plenty of houses of historical heritage also open to the public, such as: House of Nima Yooshij, House of Mohammed Mossadegh, House of Ayatollah Taleghani, House of Ghavam o-Dowleh, House of Imam Khomeini, and House of Mahmoud Hessaby.
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Archeological sites
An abundance of ancient archeological historicl sites exists in and around Tehran. Some of the more prominent ones are:
• Cheshme Ali Teppe, 5th millennium BCE. Excavated by Jacques de Morgan.
• Shoghali Teppe, 6th millennium BCE.
• Qeytariyeh ancient Cemetery, 2nd millennium BCE.
• Teppe Meel, excavated by Jacques de Morgan, believed to be the temple of the legendary ancient leader Bahram Gur.
• Vavan Teppe, Sassanid era
• Ghareh Teppe, 6th millennium CE, excavated by the British Burton Brown.
• Ozbaki Teppe, Hashtgerd.
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Others


Tehran has a wealth of restaurants and popular burger joints, both western, and traditional.
• Iran National Library
• Borj-e Milad
• Darolfonoon institute of higher education
• Morvarid Canon, Afsharid dynasty era
• Tughrul Tower, Seljuqi era
• Tehran's Grand Bazaar, 1523CE.
• Several bridges of antiquity. Example: Pol e Rumi, located in Northern Tehran, from the Safavid era, today a property of the Embassy of Turkey.
• Alborz High School
• Firouz Bahram High School
• Stodan Of Zoroastrian. Located in Aminabad area.
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The Mayor of Tehran
See main article: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
See also: List of mayors of Tehran
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Sister cities


Tehran's annual International Trade Fair.
• Los Angeles, USA (linked before 1979)
• Havana, Cuba [5]
• Beijing, China (planned) [6]
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2005 plane crash
Main article: Iranian Air Force C-130 crash in Tehran
On December 6th 2005 a military plane crashed into a ten story building killing 128 people and injuring 90. Many others are left homeless.
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DON,T FORGET !!!