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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
"JavaRanch, where the deer and the Certified play" - David O'Meara
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
This is an impressionistic chronicle, and anyone looking to learn more about the rich ethnic and religious mosaic that is Iraq will not find it here. Although its author does not say it, "Baghdad Diaries" is told from the point of view of Iraq's traditionally privileged minority based in the capital. Compared with most other Iraqis, this elite has long managed to live reasonably well even under so-called revolutionary regimes.
Some of the author's friends and acquaintances had low-level jobs in Hussein's government. One of her friends worked for Uday, the more notorious of Hussein's two sons, and was told to wear "a smart dress and make-up" for work. Another friend's nanny worked inside one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. "She said that when someone was caught stealing, they gathered the staff together, brought in a doctor who chopped off this guy's hand, and immediately dunked it into boiling oil to cauterize it."
Less arresting are al-Radi's political insights, which gravitate between resentment and pique. "How many people have to die, and for what?" she rails. "Bush says he has nothing against the Iraqi people. Does he not know or realize that it is only the Iraqi people who have suffered? It's us, and only us, who've been without electricity and water--a life of hardship." Like many artists, her writing can be more passionate than sophisticated: "I can understand the Kuwaitis hating us but what did we do to you, George Bush, that you should hate us with such venom? One can hear it in your voice. Is it because we stood up to the U.S.A. and said no?" These self-aggrandizing rants occasionally border on the comic: "This new loo has been fixed at least five times and the handle has been changed twice, and yet it still leaks. Life is very hard."
During one night of bombing, al-Radi gives her home the ironic nickname "Hotel Paradiso." Considering what fellow Iraqis elsewhere suffered under Saddam, the name may not be ironic enough. The diaries cannot recover from the fact that al-Radi, ensconced with friends and relatives in "my Baghdad orchard with 66 palms and 161 orange trees," remains relatively untouched by the sufferings of the region. She relates the privation of war and the embargo--well-dressed men begging in the streets, women darning their nylon stockings, students writing on receipts for lack of paper--but her greatest trouble is finding a good dentist before she jets off to London or Mexico to exhibit her art. And while she discusses the talk of robberies, kidnappings, and rapes, her news is as secondhand as anything on the BBC. (In fact, al-Radi is interviewed by reporters from both the BBC and The Washington Post, granted introductions by powerful friends.)
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
There is something about the Middle East that seems to require even of people who should know better a blind, bullheaded partisanship that is obstinately tribal�as if not only two peoples, but two ideas cannot occupy the same space. For all of its considerable charm, al-Radi�s �Baghdad Diaries� lacks nobility�it doesn�t embody the most generous view of one�s adversaries. These journals feel as if they were written (and published) with fear so deeply internalized by the writer that they don�t seem deeply revealing about the intersection of politics and the soul. Is that a failure of al-Radi�s? Or is it also the consequence of living under a regime that tended to abridge not just books but lives?
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Joe, may I ask you, have you actually read this thread before calling it cathartic? This is about 1991 war, not 2003. "there are Iraqis who did better before the war than after" -- do you mean to say that most Iraqis did better after their country was bombed, infrastructure destroyed and economical sanctions imposed? Are you serious?
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Joe, I answered you post, didn't I? I mean I spent my <@#$%^> cheap time to think about it. You preferred to ignore mine (as you did before) and yet somehow keep high profile -- why on the earth I wasn't born as an AMERICAN? I could be arrogant, yet to think million about myself also... Damn parents.
I don't believe you are.
There is no need to believe or disbelieve -- just ask me! Heck, I am here!
[ September 07, 2003: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
"Journalists are playing a lot of attention to me. They read about an exhibition by an Iraqi artist, called 'Embargo Art', and came in droves. Usually they don't like what I say. It doesn't suit their purpose. The CNN correspondent was totally uninterested in my art. She just wanted to know whether all Iraqis were rallying around Hussein Kamel. 'What for'? I said. 'But I will explain some of my sculptures to you if you don't censor what I say. These particular sculptures are made of large coiled springs from lorries that I have painted to look like snakes; inside these coiled springs are a few stones painted to look like animals. The snakes symbolize dictatorship.' I told her they swallow people whole, not just our sort of dictatorship but all of them, yours included. 'In fact,' added, 'yours is the biggest of all because it has swallowed up the whole world.'
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 5: paper version from Amazon, PDF from Apress, Online reference: Books 24x7 Personal blog
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet