Welcome to the United States, where anti-Israel indoctrination masquerades as 'critical thinking'
Greetings to all of you from Boston (yes, again).
I am starting today's posting with a local story - from my home town.
Indoctrination @ Newton, a new video released today by Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), exposes a pattern of anti-Israel teachings found in Newton, Massachusetts high schools, including:
Newton’s high schools have used Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) maps that falsify the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Newton students were not told that the maps were created by the PLO’s propaganda unit.
Newton’s schools presented students with a falsified version of the Hamas Charter. In Newton’s doctored version the word ”Jews” – as a target of hatred -- is replaced with the word “Zionists.”
In one lesson, Newton students are asked to consider the Jewish state’s right to exist. (The legitimacy of no other nation-state’s existence is questioned.) The lesson included “expert” opinions, which are drawn overwhelmingly from anti-Israel academics and anti-Semitic activists.
A book used in Newton high schools has a recommended reading list that includes the extremist writings by Muslim Brotherhood leaders including Sayyid Qutb, and Yusuf Qaradawi, whose sermons call for the murder of Jews and homosexuals.
Newton schools officials are shown to continuously refuse to make school curricula and teaching materials available to the Newton residents.
Charles Jacobs, APT President said, “The video also shows that Saudi, Palestinian, and other Arab-funded teaching materials have been inserted into the curriculum, much of it containing anti-Israel bias.”
The Saudi funded Arab World Studies Notebook was used in Newton high schools until public pressure forced its removal. The Notebook, condemned by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and rejected by many other school boards, teaches students, among other things, that Israeli soldiers murder Palestinian women. Newton’s Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman claimed that use of the Notebook helps develop “critical thinking skills.”
The video’s release follows news reports of anti-Semitic incidents, including hateful graffiti found in Newton North High School and at the F.A. Day Middle School. The graffiti featured swastikas and the genocidal statement “Burn the Jews.” According to media reports, Newton Day school officials – in violation of required mandatory reporting procedures – failed to inform parents and police about the incidents. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed concerns about these escalating anti-Semitic incidents.
Upon discovering racist graffiti at Boston Latin High School, city, state, and federal agencies immediately launched an investigation into the matter. Jacobs said, “Concerned parents in Newton demand equal protection for Jewish students. Accordingly, in light of Newton’s biased education, its ongoing refusal to allow public access to curricula and teaching materials, and the recent escalation of anti-Semitism, we urge Newton Mayor Setti Warren, Massachusetts’ state education officials, and the FBI to investigate this hateful situation in Newton schools.”
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
As many of you know, I grew up in Newton - about a 5-minute walk from Newton North High School. I did not attend the Newton public schools. Newton was and is a heavily Jewish suburb of Boston and both Newton North and Newton South have many Jewish students. Some of you may have heard of this alumna of Newton North. One can only wonder how much influence the Newton public schools had on her political views.
And you thought it was only Hamas that had the military style Kindergarten graduations.
Here's a tweet from Israel Radio's Gal Berger with pictures from a Kindergarten graduation in Ein Arik, a village just outside Ramallah - 'Palestinian Authority' territory:
Saudi textbooks teach how to chop hands and feet, how to exterminate Jews
Textbooks paid for by the Saudi government teach high school students how to cut off thieves' hands and feet in compliance with Islamic Sharia law. They also teach the students that Jews should be exterminated and that homosexuals should be put to death.
Barbaric textbooks handed out in Saudi Arabian schools teach children how to cut off a thief's hands and feet under Sharia law, it has emerged.
The shocking books, paid for and printed by the Saudi government, also tell teenagers that Jews need to be exterminated and homosexuals should be 'put to death'.
Recent editions were obtained by the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C.....
The books were published and handed out to 9th and 10th-graders despite Saudi Arabia's promises to clean up textbooks in the kingdom.
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The textbooks were printed for the 2010-2011 academic year and translated from Arabic by the institute.
In one, for ninth-graders, students are taught the annihilation of the Jewish people is imperative.
One text reads in part: 'The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. There is a Jew behind me come and kill him.'
I don't know why anyone should be shocked. I'd bet that the same textbooks are used throughout the Arab world, including among the 'Palestinians.' We already know that they're used in Britain (see also here)and the United States. Then again, the 'Palestinians' have their own textbooks....
UNESCO endows a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza
UNESCO and the 'human rights council' (that should be the next post) are competing with each other to see who can be more outrageous. Israel's Foreign Ministry reacted furiously on Thursday to the announcement that UNESCO is endowing a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza. This is from the Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel today expressed its shock and consternation at the news that UNESCO is establishing a Chair at the Islamic University of Gaza.
The Islamic University of Gaza is a known greenhouse and breeding ground for Hamas terrorists. Only last month, the University's Dean of Koranic studies openly called for the Islamic conquest of the Vatican and of Spain
UNESCO's motto is that "It is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed," yet the Islamic University of Gaza is poisoning the minds of men for the cause of terror.
Scientists and Academics at the University double as Hamas technocrats. The Islamic University serves as an employment program and intellectual retreat for Hamas leaders. The University conducts lectures on Hamas' radical ideology and concentrates on hostility to Israel; Hamas uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and rockets and has even run a course on explosive making. The university is a warehouse for weapons and a venue for secret meetings of military leaders.
UNESCO continues to damage its reputation. After establishing the Obiang prize, UNESCO is now establishing a chair linked to a terror organization.
Hamas and the Islamic University believe in extremism, violence and terror - not Education, Science and Culture. That UNESCO should choose to establish a chair in such a University damages further UNESCO's reputation and it creates uncomfortable and inappropriate bedfellows.
Actually, I think Hamas is a perfect bedfellow for UNESCO. UNESCO is Hamas' ideological and intellectual alter-ego.
UNESCO said the chair is to promote astronomy, astrophysics and space sciences.
Earlier this month, it approved Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity as an endangered site. The U.S. and Israel dismissed the move as cynical politicization of the cultural body.
It's very nice to 'dismiss the move,' but the United States is still providing 22% of UNESCO's budget. When is that going to stop?
UPDATE 8:31 AM
In the comments, Dan points out, correctly, that the US was forced to suspend its contribution to UNESCO by law when 'Palestine' became a member. But the Obama administration has been seeking ways to restore funding.
"About three weeks ago they (the morality police) came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies," said a shopkeeper in a toy shop in northern Tehran.
Iran's religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its "destructive cultural and social consequences." Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops.
The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.
A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.
The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.
"My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat," said Farnaz, a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs as she was told they were also banned from public sale.
Pointing to a doll covered in black long veil, a 40-year-old Tehran toy shop manager said: "We still sell Barbies but secretly and put these in the window to make the police think we are just selling these kinds of dolls."
So far, at least, I have not heard any stories about Barbie being stoned in the streets. That may yet happen too.
The problem with this type of simplistic analysis as part a history curriculum, of course, is that it presents a one-sided, highly-biased view of the facts on the ground in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, completing ignoring some critical aspects of the conflict, namely, that “resistance” is a euphemism for terrorism, and that when Palestinian women are detained and arrested by Israeli defense forces it is a result of their actions, often successful, to murder Jews as part of the campaign to extirpate Israel.
In fact, the Arab World Notebook, the teaching tool used by Ms. Engel for this class, has already been discredited as a legitimate part of any history curriculum, precisely because its primary purpose is to whitewash the negative aspects of Arab and Muslim history while simultaneously assigning blame for the region’s pathologies on the colonialism, imperialism, the West, and Israel specifically.
A 2005 report on the Arab World Studies Notebook written by the American Jewish Committee, for example, “Propaganda, Proselytizing, and Public Education,” found that while the purported intent of the publication was to create “sympathetic views of the Arabs and Muslim religion in the American classroom,” the end product of the guide was to present “historical distortion as well as uncritical praise, whitewashing, and practically proselytizing.”
More relevant to the recent incident in Newton, the skewed view of the history and present-day politics of the Middle East as outlined in the guide “appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic views of the Notebook’s sponsors, the Middle East Policy Council . . . and Arab World and Islamic Resources . . . .”
“While the Notebook pays lips service to presenting “different points of view,” the report concluded, “it provides only an Arab perspective . . . on Jerusalem, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the conflict between Western and traditional Muslim values.”
Teaching history with a political or ideological agenda, of course, does not make for true education, precisely because it does not put issues into context, distorts movements and ideologies, and uses events and facts selectively to insure that one interpretation of history, and only one, is taught to impressionable students.
Iran has sentenced Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani to death unless he converts to Islam.
Youcef Nadarkhani, now 34, was arrested in 2009 for questioning the compulsory Islamic education of his children and for seeking to register a home-based church. He was sentenced to death in 2010.
Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to Nadarkhani, Fox News said. He is in prison Rasht on the Caspian Sea coast.
The Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion,” according to the report.
Fox cited “sources close to the case.”
David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday the new development is “very troubling.”
There need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him,” Parsons said. He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the threeattempts rule.
Iran “is going through the motions” and “trying to do it in a very public way for the Muslim world and maybe, in their mind, thinking they can placate the West. It is outrageous,” said Parsons, who is a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition.
The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” he said. “They should know what Islam teaches in terms of ‘inferior religions’ like Judaism and Christianity.”
Diana West writes that the real Jihad is against the Bible (and against Israel).
Why Israel? Ye'or asks. "Given the immense territories conquered and Islamized over thirteen centuries of expansion and war," she writes, "why would Muslim countries keep plotting to destroy Israel?" And further: "Why does the immense oil wealth of Muslim nations nourish a flood of hatred that poisons the heart of humanity against such a small nation? Why is Israel considered so alarming?"
The well-read global citizen might regurgitate something about land, modern Zionism and the post-1948 "plight of the Palestinians," but these are stock narratives overwriting the age-old reason. "What Israel possesses," Ye'or explains, "is the Bible."
To appreciate the depth and breadth of this perhaps obvious but seldom pondered explanation, it's essential to realize that Jewish and Christian Bible characters, from Abraham to Moses to Jesus, pop up in the Koran as Muslim prophets who actually preach Islam, not Judaism or Christianity. This is the time-wrinkling, religion-morphing way in which Islam repudiates what it regards as falsifications in both the first (old) and second (new) testaments. Given that the Jewish and Christian religious books long predate the Islamic religious book, it's not surprising that in their Koranic guises the biblical characters "wander," as Bat Ye'or writes, "in uncertain space with no geographical or temporal references." Still, Muslims claim that these same "Muslim" characters lived in "Palestine," Bat Ye'or writes, on the basis of the "Jewish and Christian scriptures that they reject."
It follows from this highly unstable construct that Islam sees the biblical past as Islamic history "usurped" by Jews and Christians. Thus, "the land in which it took place -- though ... never mentioned in the Koran -- is (considered) a Muslim land, and Jewish and Christian holy sites are all (considered) Muslim," writes Ye'or, the pre-eminent modern historian of "dhimmitude," the diminished condition of non-Muslims under Islamic law (Shariah).
The land of Israel itself -- whose "every region, town and village is mentioned in the Bible with historical and chronological precision" -- is thus "sacrilegious" to Muslims, she explains. "They observe with destructive rage this unfolding return of history that they claim as their own. ... Any confirmation of the veracity of the Bible is seen as an attack on the Islamic authenticity of the Koranic figures taken from the Bible."
Iranian exile Amil Imani writes that Islam is going to attempt to take over Europe and Europe is blind to it.
To Muslims, anyone who doesn’t toe the line of Islam, as each sect defines it, is the “other” and fair game as kafir (blasphemous; unbeliever in Allah). The “other” covers a broad spectrum: the six billion or so people of the world who are not Muslims, including the Jews and Christians who are considered Dhimmis. Every one of the numerous sects and sub-sects of Islam consider every other sect and sub-sect as “other” to be punished and even eliminated.
Centuries old Sunni-Shiite bloodletting is only one glaring example of the Islamic unceasing animosity for the “other.” Yet, these devotees of Allah never lose sight of the most important objective: destruction of everything non-Islamic and imposition of Islam on everyone and every land. Just recall what the Taliban did to the statues of Buddha, among other things; what the Wahabis are doing throughout the world; and, what the bomb-seeking Shiite mullahs of Iran are doing to the Baha’is in Iran in relentless race to dominate the region, destroy Israel, and later rule the world.
The sword that Muhammad wielded to kill all those who didn’t see things his way has never been sheathed by his followers. As soon as Muhammad died his devoted adherents carried on with his practice of killing. Killing gets merit points for Muslims. The Commander of the Faithful, Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was knighted by none other than Muhammad for beheading, some 600 unbelievers in one day with his own sword, assisted only by one other killer. Ali’s blood-drenched sword had its own title, Zulfaghar.
The Muslims' killing campaign did not end with their defeat at the gates of Vienna. Their eviction from Spain was a temporary forced retreat. But now the Muslims have, in huge numbers, penetrated the gates of every city and town of Europe without yet having to use their swords.
The Islam in Europe blog reports on the numbers and percentages of Muslims in many European cities.
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In the West an unholy coalition of mentally-deranged suicidal-homicidal liberals, together with self-selling Islamic apologists, are doing their level best to assist the Islamists in the destruction of the existing order of freedom and liberty.
In Europe, the gullible, perhaps self-indulging native non-Muslims have welcomed the arrivals as a great opportunity for multiculturalism and let most of their Muslim population gain entry as "refugees"--who then brought over their extended families, and sent their children back to the "old country" to marry--returning, of course, to Europe right afterward. In return, Muslims have shown not a greater willingness to work but in fact, a remarkable ability to take advantage of every possible benefit offered by generous infidel nation-states. Europe is living on credit, and the creditors are hordes of Muslims who have already started delivering their bills.
Last Tuesday, I reported that Glenn Beck was in Israel.
Here's the show he did on Wednesday night on his return (yes, this was supposed to go up on Friday - sorry). Unfortunately, the Israel-only version cut off part of the show that dealt with Israel, so I have posted the full version. You need only watch the first 20 minutes to see the part about Israel.
Let's go to the videotape.
I think he's wrong about the dust from which Adam was created coming from the rock (believed to be the Even HaShtiya from which the world itself was created). The medieval commentator Rashi - the most important commentator on the Torah - says that the dust came from all four corners of the earth.
'Palestinian' poll shows overwhelming support for Islamism
No one should fool themselves that a free election among 'Palestinians' would lead to a secular state. Barry Rubin cites this poll which shows overwhelming 'Palestinian' support for Islamism.
--Asked to give their primary personal identity, 57 percent said Muslim; 21 percent, Palestinian; 19 percent, human beings; and only 5 percent said Arab.
This says something important about the steep decline in Arab nationalism but brings into question Fatah-style Palestinian nationalism, too. One can see oneself primarily as a Muslim and still support Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but this upward trend also indicates of the growth of thinking likely to lead people toward backing Hamas in future.
--Asked what government system they preferred in future, about 40 percent said they want an Islamic caliphate. In addition, 24 percent seek a system like those in Arab countries, and only 12 percent prefer one like that in European countries.
While defining what an “Arab system” means is ambiguous, it is reasonable to presume that means an Arab nationalist dictatorship since at this moment virtually no Arab country is a democracy.
Ibrahim Ali, an Egyptian lawyer who works with Islamist groups, has claimed that thousands of leading Islamists from around the world are preparing to return to Egypt in the next few days in light of the regime change. According to the Egyptian Al Masry Al Youm, Ali predicted that:
‘3000 leading figures of the Jama’a al-Islamyia and Egyptian Islamic Jihad groups will return to Egypt in a few days, as their names have been dropped from the “wanted” list maintained by Egyptian security forces.’
The article then quotes Ali’s list of where the individuals are coming from, citing many countries well-known as breeding grounds for radical Islam – alongside London:
‘They are coming back from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Kenya, Iran and London’.
Before we go jumping for joy over last weekend's coup in Tunisia, perhaps we ought to consider the likely outcome of democratic elections in that country and in others in North Africa and across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The announcement that Rachid Ghannouchi, Tunisia’s leading Islamist agitator, is to return home from exile in (where else?) London certainly should raise alarm bells in some quarters. Ghannouchi fled into exile after the Tunisians claimed he was linked to plots to blow up tourist hotels in Tunisia – claims, it should be said, Ghannouchi has always denied. But his links to militant Islamist groups throughout North Africa, such as the Sudanese government which is currently the subject of war crimes charges at the Hague, are well-document and give you some idea of which way Tunisia post-Ben Ali could go if the Tunisians do not take care.
And it is a pattern that could be replicated throughout the Maghreb. In Libya Islamist militants pose the most serious threat to the Gaddafi clan’s survival, while in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood have made no secret of their desire to establish an Islamic theocracy to replace the current secular regime. It was not so long ago that Muslim militants in Algeria were busily blowing up the Paris metro.
In the war against Islamist terror North Africa is already an area that causes Western intelligence agencies serious concern. And the threat to Western interests would rise considerably if Islamist regimes replace the secular dynasties that have pursued pro-Western policies, but in doing so have woefully failed their people.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's clearly not business as usual.
At the Islamic Awakening Conference last month in Britain, here's Salafist Abu Mounisa calling for revolt. In the good old days, he would have been arrested for sedition.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Cheryl H).
Anyone still want to pretend they're not trying to make the West into a Caliphate?
Obama: 'Jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations'
This is from a 'town hall' meeting with President Obama at St. Xavier College in Mumbai.
Here’s what the young lady asked Barack Hussein Obama, as recorded in the White House transcript:
Hi, good day, sir. Hi, my name is Anna and I’m from St. Davis College. My question to you is, what is your take on opinion about jihad, or jihadi? Whatever is your opinion, what do you think of them?
Now let’s take a close look at President Obama’s answer, bearing in mind the lessons we have learned over the last few years about taqiyya as it is practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood’s agents planted in the West:
Well, the phrase [sic] jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations.
This is always the first line of defense about jihad. There are many interpretations: it really means an “inner struggle”, and violent jihad is a fringe interpretation, etc., etc.
But this is not true. As Hans Jansen pointed out in his expert testimony at Geert Wilders’ trial, a consensus of the scholars — the Muslim legal experts and jurists who defined the precise meaning of Islamic legal terms a millennium ago — holds that jihad means waging war against the unbeliever until he converts, is killed, or accepts second-class status under the supremacy of Islam.
The only time when jihad means anything else is when fork-tongued dissemblers like Tariq Ramadan perpetrate their hoaxes on gullible Westerners.
Among Muslims themselves, “jihad” means “holy war”. Period.
But I will say that, first, Islam is one of the world’s great religions.
Heh. Doesn’t he sound just like George W. Bush?
And more than a billion people who practice Islam, the overwhelming majority view their obligations to their religion as ones that reaffirm peace and justice and fairness and tolerance.
Yes, this is true. But these four words have different meanings to Muslims than they do to other speakers of English:
Peace means “complete submission to Allah”. Those who submit live in the House of Submission, Dar al-Islam. Those who don’t submit live in Dar al-Harb — the House of War. This is codified in Islamic law, and it enjoys the consensus of the scholars.
Justice means “carrying out the tenets of Sharia law in their entirety”. This includes the stoning of adulterers, the chopping off of the hands of thieves, and the beating of recalcitrant wives. It’s in the Koran.
Fairness means “the equal treatment of all under Islamic law”. But “all” means “all Muslims”. Non-believers are not covered by fairness. Once again, the Koran is very explicit about excluding infidels from the benefits enjoyed by the faithful.
Tolerance means “the acceptance of all people, no matter what their race or nationality, who abide by the laws of Allah as handed down by his messenger”. Do you think that means tolerating Buddhists? Or lesbians? Think again.
Now the “extremists” appear:
I think all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified.
Once again, this is precisely true: Islam forbids violence against innocent people. The trick here is the Islamic definition of the word “innocent”. No one can be considered innocent unless he has declared his submission to the law of Allah. Therefore non-Muslims are never “innocent”, and may be killed with impunity.
It’s in the Koran.
Keep reading here. It gets worse. Either he's a fool, a Muslim, or he's like Lauren Booth was before her conversion to Islam last month. I'd bet he's like Lauren. As soon as he's out of the White House, I'd look for him to openly convert to Islam.
Islamic child preacher: 'A child must be raised on the love of jihad and the desire to be martyred for the sake of Allah'
This video doesn't come from the 'Palestinian Authority' nor from Hamas in Gaza. It comes from Egyptian television, which is government-owned, and since Egypt is the second largest recipient of US foreign aid, in a sense, if you're an American taxpayer, this is your tax dollars at work.
'Palestinians' to make Dayton forces more like Hamas?
The 'Palestinians' are concerned about discipline problems with the Dayton forces, and as a result, they are thinking about bringing in Islamic indoctrinators to whip the troops into shape.
PA sources said security chiefs were discussing with the Interior Ministry the prospect of bringing in Muslim clerics to indoctrinate the 25,000 members of the security forces. They said the chiefs were seeking a means to bolster discipline within the police and security forces.
"We hope to bring Muslim sheiks for education and indoctrination," a source said.
The sources said the proposal would require the approval of Interior Minister Said Bin Ali and Prime Minister Salam Fayad. They said the biggest concern was that Western donors, particularly the European Union and the United States, would object to the Islamization program.
...
The model for the Islamization proposal has been the rival Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. Hamas's military and security forces have undergone extensive Islamic indoctrination to ensure loyalty, discipline and professionalism.
Gee, ya think so? Actually, the Obama administration would probably find it to be quaint and multicultural for the Dayton forces to be more like Hamas, but the new Republican Congress would not be very happy about it.
At the end of the day, it seems that the troops' real problem isn't a lack of Islam but a lack of money.
The sources said the decline in discipline has been exacerbated by poor morale in many units of the security forces. They said PA officers were disappointed by poor salaries and benefits, including the refusal to acquire loans for homes.
"Right now, the only benefit that most of these people get is cheaper rates on cellphones," another source said. "This is not enough for those with families."
Maybe Fannie and Freddie could go global. If so, they'd better do it before January. Heh.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
