"Since Cloud Expo is running the week of June 10, we thought it'd be a great idea to schedule our Meetup this week. That way, if you have colleagues, friends, or family in town that week for the Expo, you can invite them to join you!" With those words, the OpenStack New York Meetup Group's organizer's launched a landing page this week where anyone interested can register for the June 12 evening event.| By Fuat Kircaali | Article Rating: |
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| March 3, 2011 12:45 PM EST | Reads: |
9,920 |
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey
To the President of Syria, Mr. and Mrs. Bashar al-Assad
Mrs. President and First Lady of Syria Asma al-Assad:
I wrote an open letter addressing you and Mr. President seven months ago. I've been informed that you read my letter. I've also been informed that you will read this follow-up letter as well.
Seven months ago, at the tender age of 17 months, my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. Following her abduction, I was informed by Sofia's mother that she will not allow Sofia to return home.
Twitter updates on Sofia @FuatKircaali

Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the United States. It was scheduled to start on July 27, 2010, in New Jersey, the day after her abduction, and was supposed to last until she reaches the age of 3. Any delay in the urgently needed treatment will result in a life-long disability for Sofia and make her dependent for the whole of her adult life. The treatment is not available in Syria.
Today, I received an official correspondence from the United States State Department regarding Sofia's welfare and current condition in Syria. I received the letter from the following office:
UNITED STATES STATE DEPARTMENT - BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS
OFFICE OF CHILDREN'S ISSUES
UNITED STATES CENTRAL AUTHORITY
HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE CIVIL ASPECTS OF
INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION
The "unclassified" letter updates me on recent activity in Sofia's case and the actions that have been taken by "The Office of Children's Issues" and the U.S. Embassy in Damascus.
The letter explains that the United States State Department received an "official reporting cable" from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus concerning their visit with Sofia.
A copy of the "classified" report was also included with this letter.
Seven months after my daughter's abduction, I plead once more with you on behalf of my daughter Sofia to learn of her whereabouts and see her safely and speedily returned home. I also respectfully request a visa to Syria to meet her at the United States Embassy in Damascus to bring her home.
Mrs. President, parents around the world have only the Hague Convention to rely on in international child abduction cases. I urge your humanitarian consideration, as the mother of a precious child, to fight for Syria to be a part of the Hague Convention. I thank you in advance.

The recent highly publicized piece in Vogue magazine describes you as a humanitarian with a passion for children's issues, among other things.
Like you and Mr. President Bashar al-Assad, loving parents of your son, little Hafez al-Assad, I do not wish to see my precious daughter Sofia in one of the orphanages you often visit in your country.
I await your response and hope the Syrian Government will take urgent action to assist the United States Embassy in Damascus in their search for my daughter and with her safe return home.
I thank you in advance for your prompt response.
Twitter updates on Sofia @FuatKircaali
Copy:
Mr. Barack Obama, The President of the United States
Mrs. Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State
Mrs. Sharon Anderholm Wiener, Outgoing Consul General to Istanbul, Turkey
Mr. Charles F. (Chuck) Hunter, Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy in Damascus
Published March 3, 2011 Reads 9,920
Copyright © 2011 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
- Open Letter to the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad
- State Department Photos of My Abducted Daughter Sofia in Syria
- US Leaves Its Youngest Citizen Behind in Syria
- Sofia's Abduction to Syria: Interview with Diane Macedo of Fox News
- My Two-Year-Old Daughter Sofia Facing Life-Long Disability in Syria
- A Bedtime Story for Sofia Who Remains Abducted in Syria
- Uncle Who Kidnapped Sofia to Syria Still a Practicing MD in Chicago
- My Abducted Two-Year-Old American Guest Worker Daughter in Syria
- Sofia Facing Bloodiest Easter Abducted in Syria
- US Embassy Staff Out Of Syria, Leaving My Two Year-Old Daughter Behind!
- Next for My American Baby in Syria: A Refugee Camp in Turkey
- Fox News (US) - Original Story on Sofia's Abduction to Syria
- Daily Mail (UK) - British Story on Sofia's Abduction to Syria
- Milliyet (Turkey) - Dad Searching His Abducted Daughter in Syria
- Vatan (Turkey) - Never Without My Daughter
- Turkish American (DC) - Florida Dad's Legal Battle For Daughter
- Fox News Television Interview
More Stories By Fuat Kircaali
Fuat Kircaali is the founder and chairman of SYS-CON Media, Cloud Expo, Inc. and Ulitzer, Inc.
Kircaali came to the United States from Zurich University, Switzerland in 1984 while studying for his PhD, to design computer systems for SH-2G submarine hunter helicopters for the U.S. Navy. He later worked at IBM's IS&CG Headquarters as a market research analyst under Mike Armstrong's leadership, an IBM executive who later ran IBM Europe and AT&T; and Fuat was the Director of Information Systems for UWCC, reporting to CEO Steve Silk (later Hebrew National CEO), one of the top marketing geniuses of the past two decades.
Kircaali founded SYS-CON Media in 1994, a privately held tech media company with sales exceeding $100 million. SYS-CON Media was listed twice by Inc 500 and Deloitte and Touche as one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. Kircaali launched Ulitzer, Inc., a revolutionary "new media" start-up in mid 2009.
Fuat completed Bogazici University Business Administration program in 1982 with a Bachelor's Degree. He was one of 50 students accepted to the program out of over 1 million high school graduates that year.
http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali
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“Open source has always provided a number of benefits, including easing adoption costs, propagating a better understanding of the technology, and allowing for faster evolution and commercialization of products and services based on it,” noted Terry Woloszyn, Founder & CEO, Leeward Security Ltd., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This is clearly evident with the OpenStack and CloudStack,” Woloszyn continued, “and others that have been quickly commercialized as...
SYS-CON Events announced today that OpenStack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. OpenStack software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed by a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.
OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS app...
SYS-CON Events announced today that BUMI (Backup My Info!), the premium provider of managed online backup and recovery solutions for small to mid-sized businesses, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Manhattan-based BUMI (Backup My Info!) is a premium managed service provider specializing in online data backup and recovery. Founded in 2002, the company's data backup and recovery serv...
SYS-CON Events announced today that nfina Technologies, a provider of highly reliable cloud server products, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
nfina Technologies develops, manufactures, and markets highly reliable cloud server products, designed to solve the most demanding data center requirements in mission-critical cloud applications. Nfina’s staff has decades of experience in co...
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dave Eichorn, Global Data Center Practice Head at Zensar, will share a case study describing how a utility services company handled the migration of its Microsoft platform to the cloud. Challenged with the time-consuming task of opening operations out of temporary offices, this company struggled with the need to simultaneously access data that was accumulated from a vast amount of data-intensive jobs. Zensar migrated the company’s application ...
“Social, mobile, analytics and cloud can’t be looked at as distinct technology trends; they are facets of the same movement and an everyday reality for consumers and businesses alike,” said Craig Sowell, IBM VP of SmartCloud Marketing, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This means that businesses need to start looking at trends as one: cloud is the delivery, analytics is the unique insight, social is a shareable service, and mobile is the ubiquitous access.”
...
Organizations across the world are increasingly starting to see the benefits of moving more and more services to the cloud. The focus on the cost-saving potential of cloud is rapidly shifting to completely transforming the business with cloud. As organizations are investing enormous sums on technology they are starting to realize that in order to maximize the return on investment and accelerate the business transformation process the first area of focus should be people. By ensuring the organiza...
SYS-CON Events announced today that Wowrack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Wowrack’s core expertise lies in high-availability Private and Public Cloud IaaS Hosting Solutions. Wowrack provides a true Hybrid service – where business release all IT management and hardware provisioning – taking the data center and server system administrative headaches off our customer’s shoulders. ...
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The age of data center automation is upon us. Whether it's cloud or SDN or devops in general, automation as a means to achieve efficiency and, one hopes, free up resources that can be then redirected to focus on innovation.
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