

On art, chairs and being Saddam Hussein's doctor - chatmasta
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/qa-art-chairs-saddam-hussein-doctor-150402063859266.html

======
stevenjohns
> Iraq needs better people than the Saddam regime or the current regime.

It's very difficult to take this person seriously when he's trying to refer to
Iraq's current democratically elected government -- which has a minimum quota
for women and minorities -- as a "regime," which refers to an authoritarian
government or dictatorship[0]. Iraq's future is based on people being able to
accept that we no longer have regimes and that we have democratically elected
representatives, who can be voted in or out based on a popular vote. As long
as people are not able to comprehend this concept and try to blame everything
on a central figure -- much like they did to former Prime Minister Maliki --
then we will continue this cycle of ignorance.

While Ala Bashir's artwork and history is something commendable, his political
opinions on modern Iraq (being expressed through the Gulf mouthpiece[1] Al
Jazeera for the last decade) should be considered as Pan-Arabist or neo-
Ba'athist[2] rhetoric rather than the unbiased opinions of an Iraqi civilian.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime#Politics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime#Politics)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Editorial_independen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Editorial_independence)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba'athism#Neo-
Ba.27athism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba'athism#Neo-Ba.27athism)

~~~
danenania
Surface-level democracy that disguises an underlying regime which holds the
real power is a very common pattern. In these situations, we should call a
spade a spade, not give into propaganda that calls the government a democracy.

For a US example, try voting the NSA or military industrial complex out of
office.

Real functioning democracy is a very rare thing in this world. We don't get
anywhere by pretending otherwise.

------
616c
If you are interested in other Iraqi cultural icons, I will give you two
examples of how, in the height of the Baathist period in Iraq and the
beginnning of its decline, Iraq was unique culturally and artistically, Arab
world and at large. Some of the literature and art vanguard lived there, and
intelligentsia there were pretty rare for the Arab world. Ironically, Iraq was
their safe haven; neither were Iraqi. Kiss all that goodbye.

The two were friends: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, and the much better know Abdel
Rahman Munif. Both were good friends, and I have yet to finish a novel they
_co-wrote_ (still a concept beyond, two novelist friends coming together and
agreeing artistically to produce one work), 3alam bela khara'it, A World
without Walls.

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, a Syriac Orthdoox Palestniain refugee/expat, was a fairly
large art collector, perhaps the largest in Iraq from what is said. I bring
him up because this was in addition to his extensive writing career. A year or
two into the American occuption of Baghdad, someone intentionally or
coincidentally leveled his house with a car bomb, years ater his passing mind
you, leveling one of the most kickass modern private Arab collections in Iraq.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/middleeast/22house.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/middleeast/22house.html?_r=0)

He was a renaissance man, and his work was a modern intellectual criticism of
neo-coloniasm ... in the 1960's, 70's, and later. You would be surprised how
much this stuff reads like socio-political analysis of modern-day Iraq masked
as literature... just like his friend Munif.

Munif will be super popular with the nerd/geek crowd here. Prior to being of
the top 100 Arab novelists all time, he was an oil economy expert from Saudi
Arabia trained in Bulgaria for his college years (I bring this up because he
has a great short story of getting lost with a friend in Bulgaria, forgot the
name, but I guess his drunken escapades are emobied in this character). Aften
a few years working in the Iraqi oil sector, you know, like back in the 70's,
when it all went crazy, he eventually burnt out. He went into Ba'athist
politics, and burnt out. He settled on novel writing and literary criticism
because he had to mobilize people to sift through the bullshit. He did such a
good job with his magnum opum, Cities of Salt, an epic thousands of pages long
in many volumes about a fictional country visited by Westerners under the
guise of pumping water, really setting up oil infrastructure, and destroying a
country with hyper-development and greed, he received an an honor on par with
bin Laden, his Saudi nationality was stripped for these bigs; they were not
amused by the "indirect" comparison. You would be surprised how many Arab men
and women I work in there 30's who study modern geopolitics, and have never
read his accurate prediction of Gulf society and politics decades ahead of
time. Only lit geeks know him, and that sucks. He is awesome.

If you can find translations (Cities of Salt has never been completely
translated into English, only the first volume), you need to read both of
them. And realize the hardcore liberal and cultural high-brow of Iraq, neo-
Ba'athist or not, was destroyed. If you are American (I am), feel disgusted
out what you have wiped away. The religious nutjobs were always there. The
vibrant intellectual community of 60-90's Iraq is gone, long gone, because
they obviously are in hiding or left town because we left the nut jobs with
carte blanche.

Oh, obviously ignore this lackey. He is a tool. (And yeah, new HN guidelines
and what, I don't care; you try talking positively about Iraq and I will give
you a medal.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabra_Ibrahim_Jabra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabra_Ibrahim_Jabra)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Munif](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Munif)

