title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: During this time the rest of the international communist movement was also thriving. The communist world expanded dramatically in the decade following World War II with Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, and Vietnam all becoming states dominated by their respective communist parties, usually via military victory. In the United States, Iran was seen as the holder of reserves of petroleum with "vital strategic" value to western countries, and as part of "a Northern Tier" of countries (along with Greece and Turkey) that constituted a geopolitical "first line of defense" for the Mediterranean and for Asia, To counter the activities of the USSR, the CIA established Operation TPBEDAMN in the late 1940s, funded at $1 million a year. It prepared both "disguised (`gray` propaganda) or deliberately misrepresented black propaganda" in the form of "newspaper articles, cartoons, leaflets, and books" which it translated into Persian, most of which "portrayed the Soviet Union and the Tudeh as anti-Iranian or anti-Islamic, described the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union, or explained the Tudeh's close relationship with the Soviets and its popular-front strategy." In addition, it paid "right-wing nationalist organizations" and some Shia religious figures. Its agents provoked "violent acts" and blamed them on the communists, and hired "thugs to break up Tudeh rallies." Nonetheless, the party was able to fill the streets of Tehran and Abadan "with tens of thousands of enthusiastic demonstrators" for May Day in 1946.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In February 1949, there was an attempt on the life of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The party was blamed by the government and banned. The government "confiscated its assets, dissolved affiliated organizations, especially the Central Council and rounded up some 200 leaders and cadres."


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The party continued to function underground however and by 1950 it had organized its supporters under the banner of the Iran Society for Peace ("Jam'iyat-e Irani-ye Havadar-e Solh") and was publishing three daily papers, "Razm", "Mardom", and "Besui-ye Ayandeh." In December 1950, the TPMO, its military organization, managed "to arrange for the escape of key members of the party leadership who had been in jail since early 1949."


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Such suppression was assisted by conservatives detesting the Tudeh Party, which was later outlawed and allied with Mossadegh. One Iranian conservative newspaper even editorialized:


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The party played an important role both directly and indirectly during the pivotal era of Iranian history that began with the 1951 nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and ended with the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh by a CIA-led coup d'état. The party's policy "fluctuated", first attacking Mosaddeq as 'an agent of American imperialism', then giving him some support during and after the July 1952 uprising. On 15 August a coup attempt against Mosaddeq was thwarted thanks in part to information uncovered by the Tudeh TPMO military network, but two days later party militants inadvertently helped destabilized the government by staging demonstrations to pressure Mosaddeq to declare Iran a democratic republic. As this would have overturned Iran's constitutional monarchy, Mosaddeq reacted by calling out troops to suppress the demonstrators. The party then demobilized late the next day making it unavailable to fight the coup the day after. By 1957 the TPMO was crushed and thousands of party members had been arrested.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Following World War II, Iranian public support was growing for the nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) whose profits had greatly exceeded its royalty payments to the Iranian government.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddeq, head of the nationalist movement known as the National Front of Iran, led parliament in the nationalization of AIOC, and shortly after was appointed prime minister by the Shah. Mosaddeq oversaw the takeover of British oil facilities and rising economic difficulty and polarization in Iran as the AIOC withdrew its employees and retaliated with a boycott of Iranian oil.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In early April 1951, the Tudeh revealed its "true strength" by launching strikes and riots protesting low wages and poor housing and delays in the nationalization of the oil industry. There were "street demonstrations and sympathy strikes in Tehran, Isfahan, and the northern cities." Police opened fire on demonstrators. A result was "panic" in Iran's parliament at the power of Marxist forces in Iran. With this, it became apparent that Mossadeq was not a communist and that the Tudeh did not control the government, nor did the party want to overthrow him even as it was establishing a broad public base.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: During this period the Tudeh followed a "leftist" rather than "popular front" strategy, refusing to ally with Mosaddeq. Despite the fact that Mosaddeq had introduced a new policy of tolerance toward the party, that both the Tudeh and Mosaddeq had worked for nationalization of the AIOC, and that expropriation of capitalist Western-owned resource extracting corporations by poor countries was central to Marxist–Leninist doctrine, the party vigorously and relentlessly opposed Mosaddeq and his program. In a June 1950 article in its daily "Mardom" it described the effects of Mosaddeq's policy thusly:


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Already we can be sure that revisions in the southern oil contract will not be in favor of our people and will only result in the consolidation of England's position in our country. ... The solution to the oil question is related to the victory of our party, that is, the people of Iran.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: On 16 July 1952, Mosaddeq resigned after the shah refused to accept his nomination for War Minister. Mosaddeq appealed to the general public for support, but Tudeh press continued to attack him, describing his differences with the shah "as merely one between different factions of a reactionary ruling elite." It was only after the explosion of popular support for Mosaddeq in the street that "many rank-and-file" Tudeh party members "could see first hand Mosaddeq's popularity", and came to his aid.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: although diverse elements participated in the July uprising, the impartial observer must confess that the Tudeh played an important part—perhaps even the most important part. ... If in the rallies before March 1952 one-third of the demonstrators had been Tudeh and two-thirds had been National Front, after March 1952, the proportions were reversed.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, who later switched sides and supported the Shah, "sent a public letter to the pro-Tudeh organizations thanking them for their invaluable contribution" during the uprising toward Mosaddeq's victory.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Mosaddeq capitalized on the uprising to establish an emergency rule, which allowed him to bypass the Majles, and also to institute socialist reforms. With the Soviets not wanting to back or "shore up" Tudeh, and Truman refusing demands to overthrow Mossadegh from Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill, it would take the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower to change the tune, greenlighting the coup operation.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: During this time the US government became more and more frustrated with Mosaddeq and the stalemate over negotiations with the UK government on control and compensation, with the American ambassador even questioning Mosaddeq's "mental stability". At the same time the cold war struggle continued to dominate foreign policy thinking in the west. Soviet tanks crushed an anti-communist uprising of strikes and protests in East Germany in June 1953.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: As Americans gave up hope on Mosaddeq, their propaganda and covert action campaign against the Tudeh, called TPBEDAMN, expanded to include him. In 1953, American CIA and British intelligence agents, began plotting to overthrow Mosaddeq in a coup d'état, in large part because of their fear that "rising internal tensions and continued deterioration ... might lead to a breakdown of government authority and open the way for at least a gradual assumption of control by Tudeh," just as a local communist party had led a coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, replacing a democratic regime and constitution with a pro-Soviet, one-party Communist government.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The Tudeh also sensed a coup might be coming, and created "vanguard cells" that along with the TPMO, "identified key military installation, army depots, and command and control centers in the capital" Tehran "to react violently to any coup attempt." Recently released photographs by William Arthur Cram show that Tudeh organized huge demonstrations in August before the coup occurred.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The plotters' first attempt involved persuading the shah to issue an edict dismissing Mosaddeq and replacing him with retired General Fazlollah Zahedi, while arresting Mosaddeq and taking over other possible centers of opposition. On 15 August the plot was uncovered by Tudeh supporters in the military, and a contingent sent to arrest Mosaddeq was intercepted and arrested themselves. Colonel Mohammad Ali Mobasherri, was a member of the TPMO's (secret) three-man secretariat, but also an active member of Tehran Military Governor, the center of the coup operation. Major Hehdi Homaouni served in the shah's Imperial Guard and discovered and reported the August plot to the party. In a recent set of documents released by the National Security Archive, which noted pro-Shah demonstrators sacked pro-Tudeh and pro-Mossadegh establishments, it was noted that British and American intelligence agents infiltrated Tudeh so it could blunt Mossadegh. These documents also noted that Eisenhower and Truman differed in their assessments of Mossadegh, with Eisenhower feeling he could not as effectively counter Tudeh as Truman and the CIA in August 1953 downplaying "the likelihood of a Tudeh overthrow attempt" but fears the Tudeh taking power in a more long-term fashion.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The coup attempt created a backlash against its perpetrators, including the shah. The already anti-monarchical Tudeh supporters were radicalized and on the morning of 17 August "an angry crowd began to attack symbols of the monarchy" and demanded its abolition. Mosaddeq, who was aware of Western fears of the Tudeh and who had worked to limit the power of the shah but had "never suggested he was in favor of abolishing the constitutional monarchy," saw these attacks as a challenge, as removing the shah would violate the constitution. The next day his regime ordered the military into the streets, and "up to 600 mid and low-level Tudeh activists were arrested in Tehran alone." With its network "severely damaging" the party reversed course once again, and "ordered a demobilization" of its preparations to fight a coup.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Taking advantage of the quiet, the CIA and its Iranian allies struck again, and on 19 August the coup d'état replaced Mosaddeq with Zahedi. The coup was a major event in Third World and 20th Century history and there is debate as to how much of the blame for the overthrow can be traced to bribes paid by the CIA and how much to domestic dissatisfaction with Mossadeq. Whatever the motivations, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi thereafter assumed dictatorial powers and banned most political groups, including Mossadegh's National Front, which along with the Tudeh Party, continued to function underground.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The mass arrests, destruction of its organization and execution of some 40–50 leaders following the coup has been said to have "destroyed" the Tudeh. Between 1953 and 1957, Iranian security forces using "brute force, together with the breaking of the cryptographic code – probably with CIA know-how – … tracked down 4,121 party members." This constituted the whole Tudeh underground and "more than half the party membership". Tudeh infiltration of the military by the TPMO totaled 477 members in the armed forces, "22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets." Ervand Abrahamian notes that none of these was in the "crucial tank divisions around Tehran" that could have been used for a coup d'état and which the Shah had screened carefully. "Ironically, a Tudeh colonel had been in charge of the Shah's personal security – as well as that of Vice President Richard Nixon when he visited Iran. The Tudeh had the opportunity to assassinate the Shah and the U.S. vice president but not to launch a coup." Maziar Behrooz is more optimistic about the party's chances of stopping the coup, saying that while "most of the Tudeh officers were in non-combat posts," they "were in a position to access and distribute weapons. In their memoirs, TPMO high- and middle-ranking members have confirmed their ability to distribute weapons and even assassinate key Iranian leaders of the coup. Hence, with a disciplined party membership, backed by military officers with access to weapons, the Tudeh had a strong hand."


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: With the TPMO decimated, the Tudeh network was compromised as the TPMO had "acted as a shield for the party" and helped preserve it immediately after Mosaddeq's overthrow. "Many high- and middle-ranking Tudeh leaders were arrested or forced to flee the country. The arrest and execution of Khosro Roozbeh in 1957-8 signaled the end of this process."


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: After the fact, the party engaged in self-criticism of its policies toward Mosaddeq at its Fourth Plenum held in Moscow in July 1957. They found them "sectarian and leftist" and did not to recognizing "the progressive nature" of the oil nationalization movement.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The Sino–Soviet split caused some splintering of the party in the early 1960s, with at least one Maoist group breaking away. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 1500.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In 1965, the party faced a second division between the mainstream of the organization and the splinter faction, which advocated a violent struggle against the government by arming the tribes of southern Iran. This faction caused a great deal of damage and three years passed before the unity of the party was restored. The remnants of this faction are known as the Labour Party of Iran.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In 1966, several party members, including Ali Khavari and Parviz Hekmatjoo of the Central Committee, and Asef Razmdideh and Saber Mohammadzadeh, were arrested and sentenced to death. This sparked an international outcry and hunger strikes in Europe which forced the government to reduce the sentences to life imprisonment. These events created much international sympathy for the worker's struggle in Iran and helped unify the party after the split. The Tudeh Party from this point on becomes established as one of the strongest underground movements and helps to pave the way for the forthcoming Iranian Revolution of 1979.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In the early 1970s, the Iranian guerrilla movement began in northern Iran in the province of Mazandaran. The 1970s also witnessed the birth of widespread worker strikes and demonstrations, and university campuses became a hotbed of revolutionary activity. In 1973, Tudeh released a brochure titled "Oil from Iran and imperialist oil monopolies," likely advocating for oil nationalization. The Tudeh Party drastically increased its activities, recruiting many youths and organizing regional committees, supporting the Islamic Revolution when others on the left opposed it.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: During the revolution, many political prisoners were freed and the Tudeh Party and other leftist groups were able to participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections for the first time in many years. However, the majority of seats in the Majlis were won by the Islamic Republican Party of Ayatollah Beheshti and leftist and nationalist organizations were forced out of the loop. The newly elected president, Abolhassan Banisadr, who had originally been close with Ayatollah Khomeini, also became increasingly frustrated with the developments that had been taking place and opposed the domination of the clergy and the religious factions in Iranian politics. In addition, the party denounced Amnesty International's call to end the summary executions and called it "blatant interference in Iranian affairs".


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In 1981, the Majlis, dominated by the Islamic Republican Party, forced Banisadr out of office, which initiated a wave of protests and demonstrations from all segments of the populace. Banisadr later fled the country. Armed revolutionary committees loyal to Khomeini (which came to be known as the "Pasdaran") arrested many thousands of youth and activists from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried by Lajevardi, known as the "Hanging Judge", and executed.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: At this point in the history of the Tudeh Party, the Christian and Azeris within the population were prominent.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: While other leftist parties opposed the Islamist forces at this time and were suppressed as a result, Tudeh Party leadership as well as the Fadaian Aksariat decided to support the new clerical theocratic regime. This may have been to try to follow the pro-Tehran line of the Soviet Union.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In 1982, however, the Tudeh broke ranks. The Islamist government of Iran had closed down the Tudeh newspaper and purged Tudeh members from government ministries. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB officer stationed in Tehran, had defected to the British in 1982. MI6 used this information and shared the information with the CIA. Their information was then shared with the Iranian government by the CIA, which was secretly courting Iran, as part of the Iran–Contra affair.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Quite quickly the government arrested and imprisoned its leadership and later more than 10,000 members of the party. In February 1983, the leaders of the Tudeh Party were arrested and the Party disbanded, leaving Iran effectively a one-party state. The Tudeh arrests revealed that once again the party had managed to find supporters among the armed forces, as a number of officers, prominent among them Admiral Bahram Afzali, commander of the Iranian navy, were arrested. These arrests ended the alliance between the Tudeh Party and the ruling clergy of Iran and it collapsed, even as the Soviets worked with the Iranians to build up their nuclear capabilities. Even with this agreement, the Iranian government saw the Soviets as "atheistic devils" and the Soviets did not like the government because it had suppressed the Tudeh.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: International media, such as UPI, reported that along with the banning of the Tudeh party, 18 Soviet diplomats were expelled from the country for "blatant interference." At the same time, Tudeh was accused of working on behalf of "foreign powers," with the suppression praised by Khomeini.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: From 1 May 1983 to May 1984 almost all of the Tudeh leadership appeared in videos, first individually and then jointly in an October 1983 "roundtable discussion," confessing to "treason", "subversion", "horrendous crimes", praising Islam and proclaiming Islamic government's superiority over atheistic Marxism–Leninism. British officials supported Iran's crackdown and joked about the state torture techniques used to extract the confessions. British officials were pleased by the repression not primarily because they were concerned about Soviet influence in the country since they knew that Iran was quite independent of that, but because they wanted to curry favor with the Iranian regime.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In May 1984 Ehsan Tabari, appeared on television. A man with "50 years of leftist experiences" told viewers he had read "great Islamic thinkers" such as Ayatollah Motahhari in prison following the 1982 crackdown and had now come


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: to repudiate the works he had written over the past 40 years. He now realized that his entire life's work was 'defective', 'damaging', and 'totally spurious' because it had all been based on unreliable thinkers – Freemasons nourished by the Pahlavis; secularists such as Ahmad Kasravi; Western liberals and Marxists linked to 'imperialism' and 'Zionism' …


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: In his recantation, Tabari made frequent references to religion, the Twelve Imams and Islamic thinkers and "praised Islam for its `great spiritual strength.`"


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: The suspicions of outside observers that the confession was not given freely were reinforced by the absence of Taqi Keymanash and "13 other members" of the Tudeh central committee, who died during prison interrogation. The rapid disintegration of the Tudeh at the hands of the state, and the confessions of its leaders led the opposition and remaining party members to seek answers. Explanations ranged from ideological capitulation to the use of Stalinist methods of trial. The remnant of the party outside the country resorted to strange explanations that special drugs created by the CIA and MI-6 were used. The simplest explanation came several years after the television recantations, from a prison visit by a United Nations' human rights representative (Galindo Pohl) to Iran. The Tudeh Party General Secretary Noureddin Kianouri was reported to have told the representative that he and his wife had been tortured to give false confessions. As evidence, he held up his badly set broken arm. Pohl added that Maryam Firuz had difficulty hearing, swallowing food, and sitting down because of beatings suffered eight years earlier at the hands of the Shah's secret police. Kianouri later wrote an open letter to the Ayatollah detailing his mistreatment.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: As a result of these purges, a great number of party members left the country into exile. As the party represented the "Soviet view of a preferred leftist movement" that holds a pro-Soviet ideological line and responds to Soviet foreign policy in a supportive manner, the Soviet Union was likely disappointed at the development. It is likely many hundreds Tudeh prisoners were killed during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners when thousands of Mojahedin and leftist prisoners were killed. One report lists 90 Tudeh killed in just some blocks of Evin and Gohar Dasht prisons.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Despite the repression, the party has managed to survive. Though since the Iranian Revolution the party is officially banned in Iran and individuals found to be affiliated with communist or socialist groups risk imprisonment, active members have remained and it continues to operate as an underground political organization there. This was mentioned in an Amnesty International report on political prisoners in Iran.


title: Tudeh Party of Iran

text: Today, the party leadership is mainly based in exile, as is the new Central Committee, elected in 1992. The party has taken positions against privatization, criticizes the electoral system in the country, and "anti-labor" legislation. In 2017, the party supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon as a leftist force in France, commemorated the Russian Revolution, pledged solidarity with the Venezuelan Communist Party, and criticized Iranian reformists for betraying their ideals. Additionally, the party condemned the missile attacks on Syria in April 2017 by Donald Trump, the only element of the Iranian opposition to do so, and has many wide-ranging party anthems on their website. In 2020, the party condemned the Trump Administration's airstrike which killed Qasem Soleimani, while simultaneously criticizing the Iranian regime for intervening in both Iraq and Lebanon.


title: Disney Infinity

text: Disney Infinity is an action-adventure sandbox toys-to-life video game series developed by Avalanche Software. The setting of the series is a giant customizable universe of imagination, known as the Toy Box, populated with toy versions of iconic Disney, Pixar, Marvel and "Star Wars" characters.


title: Disney Infinity

text: As Avalanche Software was closed down on May 11, 2016, Disney announced that the franchise would be retired, despite some sources stating that there were some major plans in place to keep the series alive, and the presence of numerous new characters and playsets previously planned. (Avalanche Software has since reopened under Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.) However, "Gold Editions" of the three games in the series were released for Microsoft Windows (via Steam) on December 9, 2016, which contain all the existing released figures and playset contents up to and including the third game's "Zootopia" figures.


title: Disney Infinity

text: "Disney Infinity" games are action-adventure games with physical toys, open-world creation and story-driven gameplay. Characters, playsets and other features are brought into the game using figurines and discs with the included Infinity Base. With the exception of non-human characters, such as those from the "Cars" series, each character has a double jump (unless in a vehicle) and a default set of attacks, as well as a unique ability. For example, Sulley and Jack Skellington can roar to scare others, while Violet and Randall can turn invisible. There are two main modes in this game: Play Set and Toy Box. Each playset is essentially a self-contained world with its own gameplay, based on a specific film or series with recognizable characters and storylines. Characters from one world cannot enter into another world, but players can put any characters together in Toy Box mode. Toy Box is a sandbox mode that players can fully customize and explore.


title: Disney Infinity

text: There are a number of playsets available in the series, which are accessed via placing the relevant playset piece onto the Infinity Base and are based upon several intellectual property franchises. These playsets include:


title: Disney Infinity

text: These playsets have their own unique campaign, which can be played with up to two players. However, all characters from a specific franchise can only play in their respective playset (for example, Mr. Incredible can't be used in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" playset), meaning two figures from the same series are required to play a playset in split-screen multiplayer. However, "Marvel" and "Star Wars" playsets (excluding "Marvel Battlegrounds") feature collectable "Crossover/Champion coins", which enable the use of certain characters from different playsets. Playing through a playset unlocks objects and vehicles that can be used in the Toy Box mode.


title: Disney Infinity

text: Toy Box mode allows players to create their own game in an open-world arena. Players can mix and match everything that is unlocked within each of the playsets including characters, weapons and gadgets. By unlocking new content in the "Disney Infinity" playsets, players are able to build their own worlds and essentially create their own game. There are various "adventures" in this mode, which help teach the player how to use the mode's tools. Players can also earn "spins" by playing through playsets or leveling up their characters, which can be used to unlock additional items. The mode supports online multiplayer, in which players can play around with items that only the other player has, albeit only during that session.


title: Disney Infinity

text: A portable Toy Box became available in late 2013, exclusively for the iPad. A version of the Toy Box is also available for Microsoft Windows. These versions of the Toy Box utilize the web codes included with each "Disney Infinity" character.


title: Disney Infinity

text: The "Infinity Base" has two round spots to place figurines, and a hexagonal spot to place world discs. When the figurines are placed on the "Infinity Base", the characters are imported into the game, while world discs unlock Play Sets.


title: Disney Infinity

text: Power Discs are discs that can be placed on the Infinity Base along with their characters to add new elements to the game. Players can use up to three environment enhancements (Hexagonal Power Discs) that can only be used in the Toy Box mode and up to two character enhancements (Circular Power Discs) per character. The environment enhancements can alter the terrain, change the background "sky," add new vehicles or add new weapons. The character enhancements will alter things about the character such as damage done, replenish health, allow for faster experience gain for leveling and so on. One Power Disc is included with the Starter Pack while additional discs are sold in blind bags each containing two discs.


title: Disney Infinity

text: Following the cancellation of the series, it was announced that Disney would be launching a series of action figures based on the art style used in the games.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Flashdance: Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the 1983 film "Flashdance", which tells the story of Alex Owens (played by Jennifer Beals), a welder and exotic dancer who dreams of becoming a professional ballerina. The nightclub performances by Alex and her co-workers and other set pieces involving training and auditioning provided opportunities to present the songs that would make up the soundtrack album. The film's music supervisor, Phil Ramone, made selections that he felt were the best fit for their respective scenes, and composer Giorgio Moroder contributed additional tracks in the process of scoring the film. One of his contributions, "Flashdance...What a Feeling" by Irene Cara, was released as a single in March 1983, weeks before the film's April 15 release, and eventually spent six weeks at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: When the film became a surprise success, the soundtrack sold out within days, and the record company was left scrambling to fill orders that totaled half a million copies. Music videos for some of the songs on the soundtrack were then put together using scenes from the film, and the next single, "Maniac" by Michael Sembello, had one of these promotional video clips shown regularly on MTV and also reached number one on the Hot 100. Because "Flashdance" distributor Paramount Pictures had success with a film that had no star power and received unfavorable reviews from critics, the use of the cable channel as a means of promoting films through music videos and advertising became the major new marketing strategy for motion picture studios.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Despite lukewarm reviews from critics, the soundtrack spent two weeks at number one on the "Billboard" 200 and has been certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), while selling 20 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best selling albums of all time. Its music garnered nine Grammy Award nominations, including an Album of the Year nod for all of the artists on the album, and won three, one of which was for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special that went to all of the songwriters credited. Cara received high acclaim for "Flashdance...What a Feeling", winning the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, and both the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song with Moroder and her co-lyricist, Keith Forsey. The vocalists who had singles released from the soundtrack album all continued to work with the same producers for their next or, in most cases, first albums of solo material, only to varying degrees of success.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: "Flashdance" producer Jerry Bruckheimer had collaborated with Academy Award-winning composer Giorgio Moroder on the 1980 film "American Gigolo" and sent him the script for the story of welder-turned-dancer Alex Owens as soon as he had received it to give him a sense of the music they were looking for. Despite his lack of interest due to other commitments, Moroder came up with some music that was "a very rough sketch". He thought it might fit the project well and sent it in before filming began. The demo was the music for what became the song "Flashdance... What a Feeling", but Moroder still had not committed to the project by the end of filming. The title of the film suggested that the subject matter might be somewhat racy, so he told Bruckheimer he would decide after watching the film. He received a rough cut on videotape that he enjoyed and did agree to compose the score. He also delegated the writing of the demo lyrics to Keith Forsey, who later received help from Irene Cara.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The film's music supervisor, Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone, selected several of the other songs to be heard in the film and helped in deciding where they would be best put to use, but director Adrian Lyne was especially insistent upon using another demo they had received. He said, "One of the tunes I'd heard had a kind of a chime in it, that kind of 'bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong', like that, and I said, 'Let's use that. Let's use that as a kind of a motive, as a kind of a driving thing for a dance.'" That song, "Maniac", had very few lyrics to go with it, but Lyne had grown so accustomed to working with it during production that Ramone and the song's co-writer and performer, Michael Sembello, quickly went to work on giving it all of the necessary finishing touches.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: In his 2007 autobiography "Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music", Ramone wrote, "For a musical to be successful there has to be a reason for each song." When he was interviewed for the "Special Collector's Edition" DVD release of "Flashdance" in 2010, he said, "I think all of the songs had a place," and one example he described was the Shandi Sinnamon track, "He's a Dream". The first dance sequence in the film presents Alex at her nighttime gig performing a dance routine that involves having water splash down onto the stage, and Ramone saw how that particular song, in which Sinnamon contributes some growling and moaning to her first-person account of being approached by an attractive man in a bar, was a good fit for such an extreme dance number. He said, "The creative side of this was to do something bizarre to get your attention, so 'Hes a Dream' is, like, totally off the wall."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: For another scene in which a dancer wearing an umpire's mask does a backflip off of a brick wall, Ramone wanted something equally bold. Two college students had sent him the song "Manhunt", and he was unaware that his production assistant arranged for the demo to be sung by his soon-to-be-wife, Karen Kamon. "I wouldn't have suggested that she audition; I didn't think that mixing business and family would be a smart move." Kamon never thought the song would make the final cut of the film, let alone that she would be performing it on "Solid Gold" a year later.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Ramone is credited as one of the songwriters on Laura Branigan's contribution to the album, "Imagination", and she acknowledged him for giving it what she described as "a little more of a New York sound. It has one foot on the curb and one in the street". When it came to writing a ballad for Alex's soul-searching moments before her big audition, however, he asked Kim Carnes for a contribution, and she co-wrote and performed "I'll Be Here Where the Heart Is". The only track on the album that was not completed for use in the film was by Donna Summer. Moroder and Pete Bellotte produced "Romeo" in 1981 for her "I'm a Rainbow" album, which went unreleased until 1996.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Summer's "Heaven Knows" partner, Brooklyn Dreams vocalist Joe "Bean" Esposito, contributed another ballad, "Lady, Lady, Lady", which interweaves Alex's maturation and her budding relationship. Moroder also had Esposito record a vocal demo for "Flashdance... What a Feeling" but did not have the final say as to who would record the version to be used in the film. He said, "I would have liked him to do the song for the film, but the film company wanted to have a bigger name." Cara's agreement to write the lyrics hinged on being the one to sing the song, but the film's producers had their own reasons for ruling out a male singer in that they felt that "the song should be sung from the female perspective." Esposito did, however, record the background vocals for the song with Stephanie Spruill and Maxine Willard Waters. Years later he said, "I remember everyone just going through the motions when all of the songs for the "Flashdance" soundtrack were being recorded. I don't think any of us thought it would be the success that it was." He also admitted that he felt lucky to have been on the album at all and that his duet with Summer would not have been enough for him to be considered for something that was expected to do well. "I think it was only because no one thought the movie was any good, and as a result, didn't pay any attention to who was going to be on the soundtrack."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Branigan had the distinction of having two songs included in the final cut of the film, the second being her 1982 hit single "Gloria", which was not included on the soundtrack album. Other artists whose recordings are listed in the closing credits but did not make the final track selection include Joan Jett and the Blackhearts ("I Love Rock and Roll"), The Jimmy Castor Bunch ("It's Just Begun"), and The London Symphony Orchestra (Lee Holdridge, conductor) ("Adagio in G Minor" by Remo Giazotto). A selection from Bizet's "Carmen", "Avec la garde montante", was used in the scene in which Alex mimics a traffic cop but was uncredited.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The first public showing of the film before opening day hinted at how well the audience would respond to the soundtrack. Ramone received a call from Paramount Pictures executive Dawn Steel, who breathlessly exclaimed that audience members at the screening were dancing in the aisles. Paramount, which distributed "Flashdance" on , did not think it would do well at the box office after many requests they made of Lyne to shorten the film before the release date from its original length of 140 minutes. As a result, Bruckheimer explained, "Polygram only shipped 60,000 [copies of the soundtrack], so they really had no faith in the record." During the opening weekend, he and his fellow "Flashdance" producer, Don Simpson, watched a series of young audience members go from the movie theater where it played in Westwood to a nearby record store to purchase the album. Copies of the soundtrack at that store sold out that day and took a few weeks to restock.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: By Tuesday, April 19, retailers were reporting that all "Flashdance" merchandise was gone, so the push was on to get more records in stores. "Polygram took orders for over 500,000 copies of the album in 10 days, making it eligible for gold status after the 60-day certification period required by the Recording Industry Association of America." Paramount took advantage of the music's popularity by using Cara's version of "Flashdance... What a Feeling" in all subsequent radio and television ads for the film as a way for potential ticket buyers to "identify the motion picture" and also using the "What a Feeling" portion of the title in print ads. One studio executive described the soundtrack album as the "backbone" of the film's marketing campaign.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: In March, Cara's recording of "Flashdance... What a Feeling" became the "scout" single for the film—sent to radio stations and record stores ahead of the release of the movie and soundtrack. It made its debut on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the issue of the magazine dated April 2, 1983, and spent 25 weeks there, six of which were at number one. It also spent five weeks at number two on their list of the most popular Black Singles in the US and got as high as number four on their Adult Contemporary chart that spring. At the same time, the twelve-inch remix spent three weeks in the top spot on the magazine's Dance/Disco Top 80 chart. Cara made promotional appearances to perform the song on April 30 telecasts of both "American Bandstand" and "Solid Gold".


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The May 7 issue of "Cash Box" reported on the surprise success of the film and Paramount's plan to have Lyne take parts of scenes from it to create music videos to be shown on the cable channel MTV as well as on television programs and at other venues featuring such clips. The studio explained that dance clubs at the time were more and more likely to have videocassette recorders and large projection screens for showing music videos and sometimes even video jockeys presenting them. The five songs chosen for the videos were the Cara single along with "Maniac", "Manhunt", "Romeo", and "Imagination", and two of the five were listed on the reports that MTV provided to "Billboard" and "Cash Box" that indicated what videos were in rotation on the cable network. Sembello's "Maniac" made its first appearance there in the May 21 issue of each publication, while Summer's "Romeo" debuted on the playlist in both publications a week later.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Of its four "Billboard" chart runs, "Maniac" made its first appearance on the Hot 100 in the June 4 issue and spent 22 weeks there, two of which were in the top spot. It also made it to number six on the Dance/Disco Top 80 and number 34 on both the Top Rock Tracks and Adult Contemporary charts. "Billboard"'s Chartbeat column bemoaned the latter appearance as a "sign of the times", noting that "AC clearly isn't just for Anne Murray anymore." Sembello performed the song on "Solid Gold" on June 18 and "American Bandstand" on September 10. Although "He's a Dream" was not released as a single, Sinnamon made a promotional appearance to perform the song on "Solid Gold" on September 24.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The third single released from the soundtrack, Esposito's "Lady, Lady, Lady", peaked at number 86 during its two weeks on the Hot 100 in October of that year and number 36 over the course of four weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart that began in "Billboard"'s November 12 issue. Kamon's "Manhunt" was released as a single in April 1984 but did not reach any of the "Billboard" charts despite her "Solid Gold" appearance on May 19 of that year.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: At the time of its release, "New York Times" pop music critic John Rockwell narrowed down the two best features of the album to the title track and Moroder, noting, "Had he composed the entire score, it might have had a convincing unity, since his work with repetitive rhythms and synthesizer textures retains a distinctive appeal." He lamented, however, that "the LP is really a potpourri, and too much of the music here is in the glossy, corporate dance-rock idiom that gluts the airwaves these days." Although the Kim Carnes track, "I'll Be Here Where the Heart Is", rose above the rest for him as "vaguely affecting", he felt the tone of the film had a negative impact on the songs, writing, "by and large the music serves to remind anyone who's seen the film of its most cynical aspects."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Robert Christgau was also disappointed in the lack of focus: "Ten different singers collaborate with half a dozen producers to collapse a myriad of pop polarities onto one all-inclusive rock-disco concept soundtrack." While he did give the album a grade of B−, he found the project to be quite generic: "Tenors and contraltos, guitars and synthesizers, lust and love, ballads and DOR--all are equal as these mostly undistinguished, mostly quite functional artistes proceed through their mostly undistinguished, mostly quite functional material." He also attributes the focus on dance music to the theme in the film that dancing is a passion that Alex must express. "Concept: the overinsistent beat, which signifies how compulsively they seek a good time that retains shreds of both meaning and ecstatic release."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Stereo Review critic Phyl Garland was much more appreciative of the effort, especially with regard to the "exceptionally spirited performances" and the "notable crispness and sonic brilliance, with synthesizer effects that are at times positively haunting." He had specific praise for Shandi, writing that her "taunting treatment of 'He's a Dream' is notable for its gutsy relish." He also pointed out, "There are some dogs tucked into the corners—Donna Summer's hiccupped 'Romeo' left me cold, and Cycle V is absurd chanting 'Soo-duce me tonight'—but in general I like the crackling energy of this album."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The music from the "Flashdance" soundtrack was nominated for nine Grammy Awards and won three: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, which went to Cara for "Flashdance... What a Feeling", Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special, which went to all of the songwriters credited on the album, and Best Instrumental Composition, which went to Moroder for "Love Theme from "Flashdance"". The performer of that instrumental track, Helen St. John, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and Sembello was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, and Song of the Year with songwriting partner Dennis Matkosky. Cara and Sembello also each received nominations for Record of the Year for their respective hits, and they joined Branigan, Carnes, Esposito, Kamon, St. John, Sinnamon, Summer, and "Seduce Me Tonight" performers Cycle V in the nomination for Album of the Year.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: "Flashdance... What a Feeling" and "Maniac" were both nominated in the Academy Award and Golden Globe categories for Best Original Song, the former nominee winning the Moroder-Forsey-Cara songwriting team statuettes at both ceremonies. Moroder also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and was nominated in the same category at the BAFTA Film Awards, and the title track was also nominated for the Best Original Song BAFTA. The music video for "Maniac" was awarded Best Editing at "Billboard" magazine's Video Music Awards, and the soundtrack also garnered three American Music Award nominations: Favorite Pop/Rock Album, Favorite Pop/Rock Song for the title track, and Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist for Cara.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: In 1998, "Flashdance... What a Feeling" came in at number nine on "Billboard" magazine's list of the top 10 soundtrack songs, and on the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001, the song was listed at number 256. In 2004, it finished at number 55 on AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema, and in 2011, "Time" magazine included the album on its list of the "Top 25 Movie Soundtracks". When "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked the 20 Greatest Best Song Oscar Performances in 2016, Cara's appearance at the 1984 Academy Awards was listed at number 20. In 2018, Insider included the title song on its list of 35 of the most iconic movie songs of all time, generously adding that it "has a special place in pop culture history." That same year, it came in at number 34 on "Billboard" list of the "600 most massive smashes over the [Hot 100]'s six decades", and in 2019, the magazine ranked the song at number 11 on its list of the Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs by Women.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: In the United States, the album debuted on "Billboard" magazine's Top LPs & Tape chart in the issue dated April 30, 1983, and spent 78 weeks there. In contrast to the 60,000 copies that were initially shipped to stores, the magazine reported in its May 21 issue that one-day sales to that point had crested at 140,000. The Recording Industry Association of America awarded the album both gold and platinum status on , and the June 25 issue marked its ninth week on the chart and its first of two consecutive weeks as the number-one album in the US, temporarily supplanting Michael Jackson's "Thriller". The soundtrack was certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on , for shipments of five million units and received its next award for reaching six million on .


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: In Canada, the soundtrack made its first appearance on "RPM"s 100 Albums chart on the issue dated May 7, 1983, and peaked at number two on June 11, spending 72 weeks on the chart. It was certified nine-times Platinum in Canada on December 17, 1985, denoting shipments in excess of 900,000 units. It debuted on the UK Albums Chart on July 2, 1983, and peaked at number nine, spending 30 weeks altogether on the chart. It was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on September 21, 1983, denoting shipments of 100,000 units. In Japan, the album became the biggest-selling album of 1983, spending ten weeks at the number-one position. The soundtrack also reached number one on the album charts in Australia, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where it also was certified four-times Platinum, denoting shipments of 200,000 units. Other Gold and Platinum certifications included Finland (81,000 units), France (100,000), Germany (500,000), Hong Kong (20,000), and Spain (100,000). In 2011, "Time" magazine's list of the "Top 25 Movie Soundtracks" reported that sales of the album had reached 20 million copies.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Ramone's logic of having a reason for each song did not go unnoticed in the industry. Gary LeMel, the senior vice-president of music at Columbia Pictures, described the way the tone of the songs in "Flashdance" matched the images onscreen as "the beginning of the new consistency" in soundtracks. This focus on the matching of sound and image was serendipitous as well. The simultaneous successes of the film and soundtrack were a watershed moment in the entertainment industry in that many of its experts suddenly became aware of the added value of the two-year old MTV cable channel as a promotional tool for movies through use of music videos and commercial advertising. Danny Goldberg, contemporary music consultant to 20th Century-Fox for feature films, said, "It started with "Flashdance"," and MTV's vice president of programming, Les Garland, concurred. ""Flashdance" was the picture that brought all the [movie] studios into the music video field." Writing for "The Rolling Stone Review: 1985", Marianne Meyer acknowledged the release date of the film as the turning point: "The new age began in April 1983. No one at Paramount Pictures really expected "Flashdance" to usher in a whole revolution in film marketing."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Ticket sales during the opening weekend of a film have been seen by the industry as a strong indicator of the picture's success or failure, and Goldberg opined in an essay in "Billboard" that if there is no box-office draw for a release, then a music video can stir interest in the potential audience for the movie more than any of the other options available. Frank Mancuso, who was the president of the motion picture division at Paramount, said the studio's approach was to "make music one of a picture's main cast elements, especially when, as in the case of "Flashdance," the actors are not that well known," so the studios would be reliant on hit singles for the star power the film was lacking. As LeMel explained to "Variety", music video outlets, such as MTV, provided the perfect fit since the twelve to twenty-five year-olds that those outlets want for viewers is the same demographic that Hollywood goes after. Paramount vice president Gordon Weaver marveled that the young MTV audience was "a godsend," and a marketing executive for another studio credited the distributor for this expansion of marketing strategy: "Paramount didn't know what they had [with "Flashdance"], but they knew where to sell it. The MTV buys allowed them to aim a shotgun directly at their target, instead of scattering buckshot through a general TV approach."


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The extensive exposure that the "Maniac" video received from MTV and other outlets helped Paramount plug the film for free instead of paying the several million dollars of commercial time for the standard television advertising exposure needed to get the same result. Weaver described this approach as "invisible marketing." "Flashdance" went on to be the third highest-grossing film of 1983 in the US despite having unknown actors and receiving bad reviews, so the new priority for studio marketing departments became evaluating how practical it would be to include popular music in the projects they were looking to release in order to receive similar benefits from such outlets. "Blame it on "Flashdance,"" averred "Time" magazine's film critic, Jay Cocks, with regard to the seeming infiltration of the video clip trend into movie packaging. "The "Flashdance" phenomenon was a confluence of good commercial instincts and some savvy guesswork, and now that Hollywood has found a new formula, indeed helped create one, it will not let go," he argued, citing music video directors moving into feature films and a slate of releases due in 1984 that incorporated contemporary music.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: Some of the artists with singles from the soundtrack included their contributions on follow-up albums on which they chose to continue working with the producer of their "Flashdance" recording, and for some, the soundtrack provided the career momentum to record an entire album as a solo vocalist for the first time. In the case of Esposito, that meant being the "featured" vocalist on the album "Solitary Men", on which Moroder was the main artist and producer in addition to co-writing most of the new tracks (as did "Lady, Lady, Lady" lyricist Forsey). Sembello opted to continue working with Ramone as the producer for his debut LP, "Bossa Nova Hotel", which afforded him two more US chart hits: the number 34 Hot 100 entry "Automatic Man" and "Talk", which reached number 25 on the Adult Contemporary chart. While Kamon did stick with her "Manhunt" producer and life partner Ramone to helm her 1984 album "Heart of You", her soundtrack song was not among the nine included on it, despite having been released as a single earlier in the year.


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: The film's title song arguably gave Cara the biggest career boost that any of the soundtrack artists would gain from their own contributions. Moroder produced her next album, which included their recent hit and shortened the song's title for the name "What a Feelin'", and Moroder also wrote the music for seven of the 10 new tracks. One of the seven, "Why Me?", also reunited Cara with co-lyricist Forsey and was released as the first new single from the album later that year, reaching number 13 on the Hot 100. Three more pop chart entries came from the album: "The Dream (Hold On to Your Dream)", which was recorded for the soundtrack of "D.C. Cab" and peaked at number 37, the number-8 entry "Breakdance", and a ballad that got as high as number 78, "You Were Made for Me".


title: Flashdance (soundtrack)

text: As these chart hits kept Cara in the spotlight into the first half of 1984 when she was receiving various awards for "Flashdance... What a Feeling", her success was bittersweet. Her belief was that she was not being sufficiently compensated for the recordings she had made since signing with Network Records, and she eventually filed a lawsuit against the label and Al Coury, Inc. over the issue. A Los Angeles County Superior Court awarded her $1.5 million in 1993, but because the defendants declared bankruptcy, her win was "largely a symbolic one." She did, however, begin receiving royalties for her work.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Paul Ehrenfest (18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian theoretical physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. He bonded with Albert Einstein on a visit to Prague in 1912 and became a professor in Leiden, where he frequently hosted Einstein.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Paul Ehrenfest was born and grew up in Vienna to Jewish parents from Loštice in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic). His parents, Sigmund Ehrenfest and Johanna Jellinek, ran a grocery store. Although the family was not overly religious, Paul studied Hebrew and the history of the Jewish people. Later, he always emphasized his Jewish roots. Ehrenfest excelled in grade school but did not do well at the Akademisches Gymnasium, his best subject being mathematics. After transferring to the Franz Josef Gymnasium, his marks improved. In 1899, he passed the final exams.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: He majored in chemistry at the Vienna Institute of Technology, but took courses at the University of Vienna, in particular from Ludwig Boltzmann on his kinetic theory of thermodynamics. These lectures had a profound influence: they were instrumental in developing Ehrenfest's interest in theoretical physics, defined his main area of research for years to come, and provided an example of inspired teaching. At the time, it was customary in the German-speaking world to study at more than one university, and in 1901, Ehrenfest transferred to University of Göttingen, which until 1933 was an important centre for mathematics and theoretical physics. There he met his future wife, Tatyana Afanasyeva, a young mathematician born in Kiev (then-capital of the Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire) and educated in St Petersburg. In the spring of 1903, he met Dutch physicist H.A. Lorentz during a short trip to Leiden, Netherlands. In the meantime, he prepared a dissertation on "Die Bewegung starrer Körper in Flüssigkeiten und die Mechanik von Hertz" ("The Motion of Rigid Bodies in Fluids and the Mechanics of Hertz"). He obtained his Ph.D. degree on 23 June 1904 in Vienna, where he stayed from 1904 to 1905.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: On 21 December 1904, he married Afanasyeva, who collaborated with him in his work. They had two daughters and two sons: Tatyana ('Tanja') (1905–1984), also became a mathematician; Galinka ('Galja') (1910–1979), became an author and illustrator of children's books; Paul, Jr. ('Pavlik') (1915–1939), who also became a physicist; and Vassily ('Wassik') (1918–1933).


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: The Ehrenfests returned to Göttingen in September 1906. They would not see Boltzmann again: on September 5, Boltzmann took his own life in Duino near Trieste. Ehrenfest published an extensive obituary in which Boltzmann's accomplishments are described. Felix Klein, dean of the Göttinger mathematicians and chief editor of the "Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften" ("Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences"), had counted on Boltzmann for a review about statistical mechanics. Now he asked Ehrenfest to take on this task. Together with his wife, Ehrenfest worked on it for several years; the article was not published until 1911. It is a review of the work of Boltzmann and his school, and shows a style all of its own: a sharp logical analysis of the fundamental hypotheses, clear delineation of unsolved questions, and an explanation of general principles by cleverly chosen transparent examples.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: In 1907, the couple moved to St. Petersburg. Ehrenfest found good friends there, in particular Soviet physicist A.F. Joffe, but felt scientifically isolated. Moreover, because he was unwilling to declare belief in any religious denomination, he could not apply for a professorship, and therefore had no prospect of securing a permanent position. Early in 1912, Ehrenfest set out on a tour of German-speaking universities in the hope of a position. He visited Berlin where he saw Max Planck, Leipzig where he saw his old friend German mathematician Gustav Herglotz, Munich where he met German theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, then Zürich and Vienna. While in Prague he met Albert Einstein for the first time, and they remained close friends thereafter. Einstein recommended Ehrenfest to succeed him in his position in Prague, but that did not work out. This was due to the fact that Ehrenfest had declared himself to be an atheist. Sommerfeld offered him a position in Munich, but Ehrenfest received a better offer; at the same time there was an unexpected turn of events. H. A. Lorentz resigned his position as professor at the University of Leiden, and on his advice, Ehrenfest was appointed as his successor.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: In October 1912, Ehrenfest arrived in Leiden, and on 4 December, he gave his inaugural lecture, "Zur Krise der Lichtaether-Hypothese" (About the crisis of the light-ether hypothesis). He remained in Leiden for the rest of his career. In order to stimulate interaction and exchange among physics students, he organized a discussion group and a study association called "De Leidsche Flesch" ("The Leiden Bottle"). He maintained close contact with prominent physicists within the country and abroad, and invited them to visit Leiden University and give a presentation in his lecture series. Ehrenfest was an outstanding debater, quick to point out weaknesses and summarize the essentials.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: In his lectures, he would focus on simple models and examples to illustrate and clarify the underlying assumptions. His classes were small, and he made an effort to get to know students who made use of the reading room. Though few of them were accepted as majors in theoretical physics, he had long discussions with them almost daily. According to Einstein:


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: He was not merely the best teacher in our profession whom I have ever known; he was also passionately preoccupied with the development and destiny of men, especially his students. To understand others, to gain their friendship and trust, to aid anyone embroiled in outer or inner struggles, to encourage youthful talent—all this was his real element, almost more than his immersion in scientific problems.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: If Ehrenfest felt that there was little more he could teach a student, he would send the student to other centers in Europe for more training. He would also encourage students to accept positions abroad.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Among his students were Johannes Burgers, Hendrik Kramers, Dirk Coster, George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit, who became famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin, Jan Tinbergen, Arend Rutgers, Hendrik Casimir, Gerhard Dieke, Dirk Struik, and Gerard Kuiper. His assistants included Yuri Krutkov, Viktor Trkal, Adriaan Fokker, Paul Epstein, and Gregory Breit. Other young foreign scientists who spent an extended period in his laboratory included Gunnar Nordström, Enrico Fermi, Igor Tamm, Oskar Klein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Walter Elsasser, Ralph Kronig, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and David Dennison.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: From the correspondence with his close friends, from May 1931, it appears that Ehrenfest suffered from severe depression. By August 1932, Einstein was so worried that he wrote to the Board of the University of Leiden, expressing deep concern and suggesting ways in which Ehrenfest's workload could be reduced.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Having made arrangements for the care of his other children, on 25 September 1933, in Amsterdam, Ehrenfest fatally shot his younger son Wassik, who had Down syndrome, then killed himself.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Most of Ehrenfest's scientific papers deal with fundamentals, and seek to clarify single points. His publications are renowned for clarity, by solving paradoxes or by providing clearer descriptions, or are inspiring by posing melliferous questions. His approach to science is best illustrated by what he wrote to Robert Oppenheimer in the summer of 1928, after Oppenheimer invited himself for an extended stay in Leiden:


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: If you intend to mount heavy mathematical artillery again during your coming year in Europe, I would ask you not only not to come to Leiden, but if possible not even to Holland, and just because I am really so fond of you and want to keep it that way. But if, on the contrary, you want to spend at least your first few months patiently, comfortably, and joyfully in discussions that keep coming back to the same few points, chatting about a few basic questions with me and our young people—and without thinking much about publishing (!!!)—why then I welcome you with open arms!! Characteristically, he did not like the abstraction of the new quantum theory of Heisenberg and Dirac.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Ehrenfest's most important contribution from 1912 to 1933 is the theory of adiabatic invariants. It is a concept derived from classical mechanics that, on the one hand, can serve to refine certain methods of Niels Bohr's model of the atom (although initially Ehrenfest did not accept Bohr's ideas), and on the other hand, makes a link between atomic mechanics and statistical mechanics. He made major contributions to quantum physics, including the theory of phase transitions and the Ehrenfest theorem, which states that expectation values of a quantum system follow classical mechanics. His name is also given to the Ehrenfest paradox, an apparent paradox in relativity still discussed today, to the Ehrenfest model, and to Ehrenfest time, the time characterizing the departure of quantum dynamics for observables from classical dynamics.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Ehrenfest was also interested in developing mathematical theories in economics. This interest was stimulated by his notion that there should be an analogy between thermodynamics and economic processes. While this did not result in publications, he did encourage his graduate student Jan Tinbergen to follow up on this. Tinbergen's thesis was devoted to problems both from physics and economics, and he went on to become an economist and was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Ehrenfest was particularly close to both Einstein and Bohr. After Niels Bohr's first visit to Leiden in 1919, for Kramers' thesis defense, he wrote to Ehrenfest:


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: I am sitting and thinking of all what you have told me about so very many different things, and whatever I think of I feel that I have learned so much from you which will be of great importance for me; but, at the same time, I wish so much to express my feeling of happiness over your friendship and of thankfulness for the confidence and sympathy you have shown me, I find myself so utterly incapable of finding words for it.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: On his invitation Einstein accepted in 1920 an appointment as extraordinary professor at the University of Leiden. This arrangement allowed Einstein to visit Leiden for a few weeks every year. At these occasions Einstein would stay at Ehrenfest's home. In 1923 Einstein stayed there for six weeks, after German ultra-nationalists in Berlin had made threats against his life.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Lorentz' doctorate (December 1925) Ehrenfest invited both Bohr and Einstein over to Leiden, in an attempt to reconcile their scientific differences about the emerging quantum theory. These discussions were continued at the 1927 Solvay Conference, where Ehrenfest much to his dismay had to side with Bohr's position in this great debate.


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Da hat Herr ... schlieslich der Ratte aus der Suppe gezogen (There Mr. ..finally pulled the rat out of the soup - when a scientist had solved a messy problem)<br>


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: Je besser man's versteht um so besser steht es dort (The better one understands, the better it is written there, Ehrenfest's comment when Dirac was asked in writing for an explanation of his work, and Dirac characteristically simply reproduced exactly his previous explanation.)


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: The monthly evening colloquium in physics at Leiden University, initiated by Paul Ehrenfest in 1912 at his house, still continues under the name "Colloquium Ehrenfestii".


title: Paul Ehrenfest

text: The Austrian Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information sponsors the annual "Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations".


title: Cameron Dye

text: Cameron Dye (born April 9, 1959) is an American actor and singer. He played "Fred" in the movie "Valley Girl" (1983), and also had roles in "The Last Starfighter" (1984), "National Lampoon's Joy of Sex" (1984), "Body Rock" (1984), "Fraternity Vacation" (1985), "Scenes from the Goldmine" (1987), "Out of the Dark" (1989), "Men at Work" (1990), and The Tavern (1999).


title: Cameron Dye

text: Dye was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dye's family moved around the United States and in the mid-1970s he attended Sylvania High School in Sylvania, Ohio. Later, Dye moved to California and attended Mills High School in Millbrae, California and UCLA. He was married to actress Laura San Giacomo from 1990–1998, with whom he has a son named Mason. He also has a son, Calvin, with actress Tracy Middendorf.


title: Cameron Dye

text: Dye is a founding member of The Actors' Gang theatre troupe and has performed in plays for the company.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa (Mongolian: Шаарийбуугийн Алтантуяа; sometimes also "Altantuya Shaariibuu"; 6 May 1978 – 18 October 2006), a Mongolian national, was a murder victim who was either murdered by PETN and RDX explosives or was somehow killed first and her remains destroyed with explosives on 18 October 2006 in a deserted area in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Her murder case is significant in contemporary Malaysian politics due to the alleged involvement of persons close to the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: The Shah Alam High Court originally acquitted Abdul Razak Baginda and meted out the death sentence to two of the accused, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, on 9 April 2009, wrapping up the 159-day trial. On 23 August 2013, Sirul and Azilah were acquitted by the Court of Appeal, sparking controversy. On 13 January 2015, the Federal Court overturned the acquittal of both individuals, finding them both guilty of murder and sentenced both of them to death. However, Sirul fled to Australia and efforts by the Malaysian authorities to extradite him were hampered by existing Australian legislation prohibiting the extradition of individuals to countries with the death penalty.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: After the Malaysian 14th general election marking a historic defeat for the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and some relevant parties including Altantuyaa's father have hoped for further investigations to find the motive of murder and bring justice to the case. Sirul said he was willing to reveal what really happened in the murder case provided he was given a full pardon to come back to Malaysia.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 16 December 2019, convicted killer Azilah Hadri alleged from death row in Kajang Prison that the order to kill Altantuyaa Shaariibuu came from former Prime Minister Najib Razak and the latter's close associate, Abdul Razak Baginda.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Altantuyaa was born in 1978. She and her sister were raised in the Soviet Union where Altantuyaa attended first grade in elementary school. She was reportedly fluent in Mongolian, Russian, Chinese and English, and knew some French.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Altantuyaa moved back to Mongolia in 1990 and a few years later, married a Mongolian techno singer named Maadai. They had a child in 1996 but the marriage ended in divorce and the child was sent to live with Altantuyaa's parents. Despite training as a teacher, Altantuyaa briefly relocated to France to attend modelling school, before returning to Mongolia. Her mother has however said that her daughter had, to her knowledge, never worked as a model.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Altantuyaa remarried and had another child in 2003, but the second marriage also ended in divorce. The second child was also put in the care of Altantuyaa's parents. She worked as a translator and often travelled out of Mongolia to countries like China, Singapore and Malaysia. Records indicate that she visited Malaysia at least twice; the first time in 1995 and the second in early 2006.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: It was alleged that she was introduced by the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, to Abdul Razak Baginda, a defence analyst from the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre, at an international diamond convention in Hong Kong, and had a relationship with Baginda while accompanying him to Paris to work as a translator during his negotiations to purchase s from France for the Malaysian government. Hong Kong-based news website "Asia Sentinel" revealed in a series of photographs that Altantuyaa was in France during which time the two quickly became romantically involved.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: However, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the "Malaysia Today" editor, was the one who connected Najib Razak with the Altantuyaa murders. Najib Razak denied all allegations as there were no concrete proof about him knowing Altantuyaa. Raja Petra retracted his allegation of the involvement of Najib Razak and Rosmah Mansor after the case were brought to court. Afraid of being prosecuted by the Malaysian courts for giving a false statement, Raja Petra fled to England, leaving his wife and children behind. In addition, a former aide to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Muhamad Rahimi Osman, claimed that Sirul's family was enticed to make a false statement that Najib was involved in Altantuyaa's murder.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: According to reports by the French newspaper "Liberation", Altantuyaa found out that one of the parties involved in negotiations, French company Armaris, paid out commissions of 114 million euros for the deal (reportedly one billion euros or RM4.7 billion for the purchase of three submarines). The commission was credited in the accounts of a company controlled by Abdul Razak, Perimekar. A letter written by Altantuyaa and found after her death shows that she had been blackmailing Mr. Baginda, seeking US$500,000 to remain silent about her knowledge of the deal. SUARAM secretariat, Cynthia Gabriel, commented that the Paris Courts have "extended its investigations with circumstances that led to Altantuyaa's death. However, the French Courts are not investigating the murder of Altantuyaa as its focus is on the alleged corruption conducted by DCNS with regards to the sale of the Scorpène submarines, but would deliberate on the murder in the course of the inquiry. On 25 June 2012, a French police investigation revealed that there were no immigration records of an “Altantuyaa Shaariibuu” entering France from 1999 to 2006. The same report noted instead the entry of a SHAARIYBUU Bayasgalan, who bore similarities to, but was not conclusively identified as Altantuyaa, as well as pointed out that Najib's entourage might have entered France through diplomatic channels as there was evidence of his presence but no corresponding immigration record. During the trial into Altantuyaa's death, Baginda told investigators that he had travelled with her to France in 2005. Records seized by French investigators from DCN's former financial chief described Altantuyaa as Baginda's translator. On the other hand, Rosana Weili, the Director of Perimekar, claimed that the negotiations were conducted in English as the French negotiators spoke English. Rosana also had "no knowledge of anyone by the name of Altantuyaa" in the negotiation team.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: An article from "The Star" reported that when the deal was signed on 5 June 2002 between the Malaysian government and the submarine manufacturers, Abdul Razak Baginda had not met Altantuyaa as they only met two years after the agreement was signed.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: When it was realised she was missing on 19 October 2006, her cousin lodged a police report and sought help from the Mongolian embassy in Bangkok. The Malaysian police found fragments of bone, later verified as hers, in forested land near the Subang Dam in Puncak Alam, Shah Alam. Police investigation of her remains revealed that she was shot twice before C-4 explosives were used on her remains, although there has been later suggestion that the C-4 explosives may have killed her. However, lab results confirmed the explosives used was PETN and RDX, a type of explosive used in quarries which could have been sourced from nearby quarries. When her remains were found their identity could only be confirmed with a DNA test.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Members of the police force were arrested during the murder investigation. The two murder suspects have been named as Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri, 30, and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, 35. They had been members of the elite Special Actions Unit () and were both assigned, albeit as bodyguards, to the office of the Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Abdul Razak has been charged with abetting the murder.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: According to court testimony by Altantuyaa's cousin Burmaa Oyunchimeg, Altantuyaa had shown Burmaa a photograph of 3 persons taking a meal together: Altantuyaa, Razak Baginda, and a government official. When questioned by the lawyer of the victim's family, Karpal Singh, Burmaa identified the official as then Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 22 July 2008, Karpal Singh, who also holds a watching brief for the victim's family, filed a notice of motion to call 4 new witnesses, including Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, to testify in the trial, as well as sought to recall the first prosecution witness in the trial, private detective P. Balasubramaniam, for further examination. According to Karpal, Najib's testimony would be able to introduce fresh evidence to the case, and his requests were justifiable as per Section 425 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), which allows a court to "summon or recall any person as a witness in a trial", as well as "summon or recall any such person if his evidence appears to the court to be essential to the just decision of the case." On 23 July 2008, the petition notice was rejected by the High Court. The High Court judge, Mohd Zaki, stated that "only the parties involved, namely the prosecution and the defence" had a right to submit the petition.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 31 October 2008, the High Court acquitted Abdul Razak Baginda of abetment in the murder of Altantuyaa, with the prosecution saying they would appeal the acquittal. As of March 2009, the appeal had yet to transpire. However in a development 13 years later at a court hearing in the civil case brought against former policemen Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar, as well as Najib and the Malaysian government by Altantuya's father, incriminating evidence emerged against Baginda. The court was told in May 2022 that on the day of her disappearance, Altantuyaa had made a police report in which she suggested that authorities "look for Razak Baginda" if anything should happen to her.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar were ordered to enter their defence and testify under oath. On 10 November 2008, it was announced that the murder trial has been postponed to January 2009 to allow the defence more time to prepare and gather witnesses. The witnesses sought included Malaysia Today editor, Raja Petra Kamarudin and private investigator, P. Balasubramaniam, who was unlocatable at that time.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: The request by the defence counsel for Sirul Azhar and Azilah to get statements from all prosecution witnesses was rejected with the reason given that "witness statements recorded under Section 112 of the Criminal Procedure Code is privileged". This would have included the witness statement of Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's former aide-de-camp DSP Musa Safri, which would have been used to rebut Abdul Razak's affidavit.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 3 February 2009, Sirul Azhar pleaded with the court to not pass the death sentence on him, as he was like "a black sheep that has to be sacrificed" to protect unnamed people who have never been brought to court or faced questioning. "I have no reason to cause hurt, what's more to take the life of the victim in such a cruel manner... I appeal to the court, which has the powers to determine if I live or die, not to sentence me so as to fulfil others' plans for me."


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 9 April 2009, High Court Judge Zaki Yasin ruled that Sirul Azhar's and Azilah's statements were "unbelievable" as both of the accused only blamed each other. Both policemen were sentenced to death for the murder of Altantuyaa. Wrapping up the 159-day trial, Zaki said both of them failed to raise any reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case. However, their lawyers planned to file an appeal. Both policemen showed no emotion when they heard that they were sentenced to be hanged until dead. Their family members accept the court's decision and denied any political elements in the verdict. The two policemen appealed their sentence in late August. The Court of Appeal has fixed a date for their appellate hearing for 10 June 2013.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Shariibuu Setev's lawyers have applied for a review the Attorney-General's decision not to appeal Abdul Razak Baginda's acquittal in the murder of Shariibuu's daughter, Altantuyaa. The application was set to be heard at the High Court on 8 July 2009. Dr. Shariibuu later withdrew the application but said he would still proceed with the claim against Abdul Razak, Azilah, Sirul Azhar, and the Government of Malaysia for damages over Altantuyaa's death.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Sirul and Azilah were acquitted on 23 August 2013 by the Court of Appeal. Several reasons were given for the acquittal such as the failure of the prosecution to provide a strong motive for the two men to murder the victim and the failure to call for the cross-examination of Najib's aide Musa Safri and Najib Razak. The acquittals drew the derision of Altantuyaa's father, and many Malaysians.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: The prosecution immediately made an appeal to the Federal Court over the acquittal of the Azhar and Sirul which was heard on 23 June 2014. The Federal Court on 13 January 2015 overturned the acquittal of both individuals, finding them both guilty of murder and sentenced both of them to death. It was later discovered that Sirul did not show up during the appeal hearing and was believed to be in Australia. The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, has made an extradition request to Australia calling for Sirul, but faces difficulty as Australian law does not allow for the extradition of individuals to another jurisdiction if they could be sentenced to death. Sirul was detained by Australian immigration authorities in Brisbane, Queensland, on 20 January 2015 after an Interpol red notice was issued for his arrest.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Three years after the Federal Court found both policemen guilty of murder and sentenced them to death, Dr Shaariibuu Setev, the father of Altantuyaa, made a report to request the police to reopen the case of the murder as his lawyer Ramkarpal said that the motive of the murder needed to be investigated and who ordered the killing be brought to justice.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who led Pakatan Harapan to defeat Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Election (GE14) on 9 May 2018, said the murder case should be reopened and agreed that it warranted further investigation.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: After the GE14, Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga asked Dr Mahathir Mohamad to help bring justice in the murder case of Altantuyaa while Malaysian political leader Anwar Ibrahim said Sirul should face a new trial as the judges' ruling was compromised and the reluctance of the judges to call relevant witnesses made a mockery of the law.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: On 8 December 2020, Azilah had lost his appeal, in which he sought a re-trial and review of his conviction and sentence. The Federal Court of Malaysia dismissed the appeal as they found the case does not carry any breach or miscarriage of justice to warrant a review of the case. This particular appeal was Azilah's final legal attempt to escape from the gallows, and the failure of the appeal had effectively finalized Azilah's death sentence, confirming the former police officer to hang on a later date for Altantuyaa's murder. Azilah remains on death row since 8 December 2020.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: In a statutory declaration in his sedition trial in June 2008, Raja Petra said that he was "reliably informed" that Rosmah Mansor (the wife of Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Razak) was one of three individuals who were present at the crime scene when Altantuyaa Shaariibuu was murdered on 19 October 2006. He wrote that Najib's wife, Rosmah Mansor, and Acting Colonel Abdul Aziz Buyong and his wife, Norhayati, Rosmah's aide-de-camp, were present at the scene of the murder and that Abdul Aziz Buyong was the individual who placed C4 plastic explosive on Altantuya's body and blew it up. Dr Shaariibuu Setev, the father of Altantuyaa Shaariibuu, has asked the police to conduct a thorough investigation into an allegation by Raja Petra saying the police should look seriously into the allegations as it might provide them with fresh evidence in their case.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: In retaliation, the two people named in Raja Petra's statutory declaration on 18 June 2008, Lt-Col Abdul Aziz Buyong and his wife Lt-Col Norhayati Hassan, as having been present at the murder scene of Mongolian Altantuyaa Shaariibuu are suing Raja Petra for defamation. Abdul Aziz is seeking an apology from Raja Petra to be published in certain websites and newspapers, the removal of the statutory declaration from his blog and damages of RM1 million.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Raja Petra's counsel, J. Chandra, later insinuated that the article titled ‘Let's send the Altantuyaa murderers to hell’ on 25 April under Raja Petra's byline was posted without his consent or knowledge.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Raja Petra appeared to have distanced himself from the statutory declaration in a television interview with TV3, saying its accusations linking Najib Razak and Rosmah Mansor to the murder were repeating information passed onto him by opposition figures, rather than information he knew to be true himself. He appeared to have stated that he did not genuinely believe that Rosmah was at the murder scene. The Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement alleged that the interview had been heavily edited and spin doctored in favour of Prime Minister Najib Razak just in time for the upcoming Sarawak state elections. Raja Petra also denied that he did not believe Rosmah was at the scene saying that the interview was "chopped up". He also later clarified and pointed out that he had always been consistent in relation to the statutory declaration, saying that he had never directly accused Rosmah of being at the scene of the murder, merely repeating what was told to him.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: A second statutory declaration was filed on 1 July 2008 by Abdul Razak Baginda's private investigator P. Balasubramaniam, disclosing then deputy Prime Minister Najib's links and Altantuyaa. Bala said the police omitted information about the relationship between Najib and Altantuyaa during their investigation. In the statutory declaration Abdul Razak had told Balasubramaniam that the deputy prime minister had a sexual relationship with Altantuyaa and that the trio had dined together in Paris. Detailed conversations in a statutory declaration revealed that Abdul Razak had in effect inherited Altantuyaa as a lover from Najib, who passed her on because he did not want to be harassed as a deputy prime minister. Among other lurid details, Balasubramaniam described text messages between Najib and Abdul Razak in which the latter was asking for help to avoid arrest, implying Najib personally interfered with the murder investigation. In making his statutory declaration, Balasubramaniam mentioned that a man in a blue Proton Saga happened to be driving past the home of defense analyst Abdul Razak Baginda at that time of the day before Altantuyaa was reported missing on 19 October 2006 and revealed that the man was Nasir Safar, the special advisor to Najib Razak.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Former deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to look into the case. However, the RCI has not been convened on this issue.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: It has been claimed that Balasubramaniam's allegation on the involvement of Najib Razak on the murders of Altantuyaa could have political motivations, as the press conference for the allegation was made at the national PKR Headquarters.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: The following day Balasubramaniam retracted the statutory declaration he made on 1 July 2008 proffered a second statutory declaration and that erased all traces of allegations that referred to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and Altantuyaa Shaariibuu's murder. There were accusations that this new statutory declaration could have been due to intimidation or inducement, and was done not on his own free will. Bala's first lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu said he was not able to get in touch with Bala despite repeated phone calls to Bala's cell phone The Malaysian police said on Sunday 6 July that they have asked Interpol to help find the private investigator who had been reported missing since making explosive claims linking the deputy premier to a murder. Bala's nephew filed a missing person's report saying the investigator and his family had disappeared. It was discovered on 10 July that Balasubramaniam's house in Taman Pelangi had been broken into, but police have yet to ascertain whether anything was stolen. Balasubramaniam was said to have taken refuge in a neighbouring country with his wife and children.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: It is assumed that Bala was running away because he either received death threats or a massive bribe from Najib.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: After his reappearance, Bala claimed that he signed the second statutory declaration without even reading it, claiming he was threatened. Bala also said that a member of Najib's family, Najib's younger brother Nazim Abdul Razak, teaming up with Deepak Jaikishan, a businessman with connections to Najib Razak's family, made Bala withdraw his first statutory declaration and offered him RM5 million to do so, but that his first declaration was true. Balasubramaniam has declined to meet the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission in Singapore to give his testimony about allegations surrounding the murder of Altantuyaa Shaariibuu as he has made his personal security a prerequisite for his testimony. The MACC also wanted to classify all correspondences between Balasubramaniam and their organisation as ‘secrets’ under the Official Secrets Act, which according to Bala's lawyer there was a disagreement to this demand.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Bala continued to reiterate that the first statutory declaration he signed was the truth. He actively campaigned for the Malaysian opposition giving talks on Najib and Rosmah's alleged role in the death of Altantuyaa until his eventual death by heart attack on 15 March 2013.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Malaysian businessman Deepak Jaikishan in the later part of 2012 held several press conferences regarding his role in the retraction of Balasubramaniam's first statutory declaration and the supposed coercion in making Bala sign the second declaration. He also made damning accusations against Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor, implying they were the ones giving instructions and had prior knowledge of coverup of the first statutory declaration. He further revealed that it was the Prime Minister's brother Nazim Abdul Razak who paid off Balasubramaniam. In a biography launched on 19 March 2013, Rosmah Mansor denied any involvement with the murder of Altantuya, stating that she was attending a special session with the Islamic Orphans Welfare Association on the day in question, and describing the accusations against her as "slander".


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Deepak has also made claims denying that he is not currently being sponsored by the Malaysian opposition Pakatan Rakyat or its leader Anwar Ibrahim, despite claims by certain parties that he is. Deepak has expressed regret in being involved in the Altantuyaa affair. Anwar has continually denied that he is behind the recent exposes by Deepak. The revelations come at the same time when Deepak is being involved in a lawsuit against the government and governing party UMNO in a land deal case. He also said that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission(MACC) is more interested in ignoring this matter rather than starting an investigation.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: He made further references to the lawyer duo who were involved in the drafting the second statutory declaration, implying they came from the law firm of Zul Rafique & Partners of Kuala Lumpur. It was later inferred to the Malaysian Bar Council by several parties, including activist Haris Ibrahim and Robert Phang that the lawyer duo was Tan Sri Cecil Abraham and his son. The Bar Council has promised to begin investigations into the drafting of the second statutory declaration. Bala's lawyer, Americk Sidhu, revealed in a Bar Council investigation hearings that Cecil Abraham confirmed to him that he was the one who drafted Bala's second statutory declaration under instructions from Najib himself. A professional misconduct complaint will be lodged against Cecil Abraham by the Bar Council, whereby under the Legal Profession Act he could be reprimanded, fined and suspended from practice for up to five years.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: Sirul Azhar, the former police commando, who was convicted for the murder of Altantuyaa, revealed during his detention in Australia that he was under orders to kill Altantuyaa and that the real murderers were still free. He also mentioned that Najib's aide-de camp Musa Safri and his superior should have been made to testify during the murder trial. Sirul's claims have been immediately rubbished by Najib and Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar. The opposition has asked Najib to explain why he was asserting that Sirul's claims were "total rubbish". In January 2016, Sirul Azhar denied that Najib Razak involved in the murder case.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: A lawyer for Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri said the type of explosives used in the murder of Mongolian national Altantuyaa Shaariibuu is not in the stock of federal police headquarters Bukit Aman. “Azilah's log record from Bukit Aman shows that he was only issued with a Glock pistol and magazines. Hence, there is a question as to how this type of explosive was allegedly used," said lawyer Hazman Ahmad. In addition, both Sirul and Azilah are not trained to handle explosives and bombs such as the C4.


title: Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa

text: In an investigative news report 101 East by Al Jazeera, an interview of a purported relative of Sirul called 'Frank' claimed that Sirul mentioned to him that Razak Baginda was the person who shot and killed Altantuyaa. The documentary also alleged that the-then Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak had an extramarital affair with the victim prior to her death. The Australian journalist Mary Ann Jolley, who did the report, was deported from Malaysia on June 14, 2015 by the Malaysian authorities, alleging she had tarnished Malaysia's image. Following the airing of the documentary on 10 September 2015, the Malaysian Prime Minister's Department and the former Inspector-General of Police, Musa Hassan, both issued statements contesting the report's assertions.