Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Iraqi govt bans theater and music classes in Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute
"Last week, the Iraqi government shut down social clubs that serve alcohol in Baghdad, enraging the educated class who demonstrated against the extreme Islamic-inspired order. Today, Iraqis woke up to hear a far worse order; the Iraqi Ministry of Education has banned theater and music classes in Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute, and ordered the removal of statues showcased at the entrance of the institute without explaining the move."
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9 comments :
How we miss the martyred President.
Yes...killing theatre classes just isn't the same as burning down entire villages with chemical weapons and stuffing the fools who speak for themselves into woodchippers.
Shame on America...if only we could unhang the horrible tyrant.
There was an article the other day about how "Saddam's human shredders" were also a complete lie. But C.H. doesn't care, he just repeats whatever the previous moron said
The human shredder story was not confirmed by Iraqis, but these stories were:
"This is when I witnessed the depravity of Uday firsthand. I saw him rape, murder, bully, and destroy anyone who dared to question his will. This could be anyone from friends of his father to innocent passersby. On one occasion a honeymooning couple, the wife of which Uday took a liking to, was split apart forever when she threw herself to her death from a balcony after being raped by Uday."
"A woman known as Um Haydar was beheaded reportedly without charge or trial at the end of December 2000. She was 25 years' old and married with three children. Her husband was sought by the security authorities reportedly because of his involvement in Islamist armed activities against the state. He managed to flee the country. Men belonging to Feda'iyye Saddam came to the house in al-Karrada district and found his wife, children and his mother. Um Haydar was taken to the street and two men held her by the arms and a third pulled her head from behind and beheaded her in front of the residents. The beheading was also witnessed by members of the Ba'ath Party in the area. The security men took the body and the head in a plastic bag, and took away the children and the mother-in-law. The body of Um Haydar was later buried in al-Najaf. The fate of the children and the mother-in-law remains unknown."
"Like you, I am also a Christian doctor from Iraq who has been working in this country for the last 26 years.
Unlike you, however, I and my family, have not only watched but also sensed and experienced bitterly and in person, the physical and the psychological torture and the terror that we were subjected to, at the hands of Saddam’s thugs and secret service criminals.
'The despot, known as Saddam, had oppressed Iraq for more than 30 years, unleashing devastating regional wars and reducing his once promising, oil-rich nation to a claustrophobic police state.
For decades, it had seemed that his unflinching hold on Iraq would endure, particularly after he lasted through disastrous military adventures against first Iran and then Kuwait, where an American-led coalition routed his unexpectedly timid military in 1991.
His own conviction that he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever was such that he refused to accept that he would be overthrown in April 2003, even as American tanks penetrated the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in a war that has become a bitterly contentious, bloody occupation.
After eluding capture for eight months, Mr. Hussein became the American military’s High Value Detainee No. 1. But he heaped scorn on the Iraqi judge who referred to him as the “former” president after asking him to identify himself on the first day of his trial for crimes against humanity, which ultimately lead to his execution.
“I didn’t say ‘former president,’ I said ‘president,’ and I have rights according to the Constitution, among them immunity from prosecution,” he growled from the docket. The outburst underscored the boundless egotism and self-delusion of a man who fostered such a fierce personality cult during the decades that he ran the Middle Eastern nation that joking about him or criticizing him in public could bring a death sentence.'
'Even at the end, he showed no remorse. When four Iraqi politicians visited him after his capture in December 2003, they asked about his more brutal acts. He called the Halabja attack Iran’s handiwork; he said that Kuwait was rightfully part of Iraq and that the mass graves were filled with thieves who fled the battlefields, according to Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister. Mr. Hussein declared that he had been “just but firm” because Iraqis needed a tough ruler, Mr. Pachachi said.
It was a favorite theme, one even espoused in a novel attributed to Mr. Hussein called “Zabibah and the King.”
At one point, the king asks the comely Zabibah whether the people needed strict measures from their leader. “Yes, Your Majesty,” Zabibah replies. “The people need strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness.”
Aside from his secret police, he held power by filling the government’s upper ranks with members of his extended clan. Their Corleone-like feuds became the stuff of gory public soap operas. Mr. Hussein once sentenced his elder son, Uday, to be executed after he beat Mr. Hussein’s food taster to death in front of scores of horrified party guests, but later rescinded the order. The husbands of his two eldest daughters, whom he had promoted to important military positions, were gunned down after they defected and then inexplicably returned to Iraq.
Continual wars sapped Iraq’s wealth and decimated its people. In 1980, Mr. Hussein dragged his country into a disastrous attempt to overthrow the new Islamic government in neighboring Iran. By the time the war ended in stalemate in 1988, more than 200,000 Iraqis were dead and hundreds of thousands more wounded. Iran suffered a similar toll. Iraq’s staggering war debt, pegged around $70 billion, soon had wealthy Arab neighbors demanding repayment. Enraged, he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, only to be expelled by an American-led coalition in the Persian Gulf war seven months later.
Yet in the language of his Orwellian government, Mr. Hussein never suffered a setback. After the gulf war ended with the deaths of an estimated 150,000 Iraqis, he called “the Mother of All Battles” his biggest victory and maintained that Iraq had actually repulsed an American attack.
“Iraq has punched a hole in the myth of American superiority and rubbed the nose of the United States in the dust,” Mr. Hussein said.'
'Some religious parties have also opposed reviving the Babylon Festival that used to occur every summer in Iraq’s Hilla province, an hour drive from Baghdad, saying that music and dance are prohibited while observing the birthday of a religious figure which coincided with the festival's timing.
Religious parties have also closed down clubs. This snowballed in protests by Iraqi intellectuals to condemn tightening of freedoms, and one conspicuous slogan appeared during their marches was “Baghdad is not Kandahar”.
"The zealously banning of freedoms won't be long in Iraq. There are Iraqis that reject such moves," al-Shakarchi said, adding, "the voices of intellectuals, and freedom and creativity lovers will be louder to reject all of this." '
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