The execution: From an Iraqi blogger.

She is 18, a student, lives in Mosul. I think that she is Sunni, but I'm not sure.

http://astarfrommosul.blogspot.com/

At about 6 AM, I got an SMS from the US telling me that "Saddam has just been executed", I was very sleepy, could barely think, read it once, then twice, then WHAT!!?
Why now? Why first day of Eid? Why so early? Why no notice?

I rushed downstaris, mom was praying the Morning prayer, the electricity was off, there was no way to confirm the news (except the radio, but no one thought of that)..
We were so angry, not for the fact that he was executed, but for how and when he was executed.

I managed to sleep for few hours before waking up again for breakfast, I logged online to the BBC and AlJazeera and knew the details.. You see when asked why the execution was done on the first day of Eid, a member of the court said that Eid starts on Sunday in Iraq as I read on Al-Jazeera.
This made me even angrier.. Thanks to the new freedom, Eid starts on Saturday for Sunnis, and on Sunday for some of the Shiites, Monday for the others. Sunnis are Iraqis, and Eid DOES start on Saturday in Iraq..

Anyway, at about 12 o'clock, about 100 persons were in out house, all to congratulate us on Eid. Much more than every year since grandpa (The eldest in our family) is in Mosul and is living in our house with grandma. I and HNK were very busy making coffee and serving, the youth went outside, and the others split into two rooms, barely fitting.
Some of the visitors didn't even know about the execution, and were shocked. You see, not everyone had electricity. It makes me laugh when I write about our situation.. Gosh, couldn't they respect us more?? *Sigh*

Saddam's death won't lead to anything good, as did his arrest, and trial.. As I've said before, he was a dectator, but now, to me, he was not but a leader who made things work!

Never have we had better times after the war than the worst before.. truly.

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you refer to bush's "Zionist" friends?

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is the site down or maybe my firewall is`t accepting the site..i`ve been reading her posts for well over a year now and this is the first time i`m not getting anything

Worked fine a few minutes ago.

Maybe the site is down.

I'll keep trying the link. I'd like to read more of her posts.

It's not revolution which the masses want. They just want things to work properly and peacefully. Give them that, and most people will be happy. You just have to learn how to stem the ambition of the truly degenerate wealthy.

Things tend to continue to work here. The electricity is on, the water comes out of the tap, the ATM works, the gas pumps work, the stores have lots of shit to buy. The elections might be rigged, the rich are getting far too rich and the poor are, well, still poor, but as long as the cable works and the malls haven't closed, life's good.

And because the good things in life are generally available, we tend to blame those who don't have them as responsible for their own failure. Can't pay your electric bill? Well, it must be your own fault; you couldn't hold a job (also your own fault) or you blew your paycheck on something else. It's much easier to assign personal blame than to take on, as a part of the society, the responsibility (meaning, higher taxes).

I had to chuckle last night, listening to Tweety disavow being a Marxist. Talk about cognitive dissonance!


Tansy Gold, more Marxist than most people she knows

Unless things have changed drastically, third world countries do have a code, a balance per se. The poor or disadvantaged don't get as screwed over as you'd think, because too much does drive them to march in the streets. So...if a third world country does appear to be higher in graft than the US, it's only because it's more open, but then, once you know the devil you're dealing with, that's a bit more honest than what we have here in the US, where the rich are good about hiding their indiscretions.

My comment -- second paragraph as well as the rest -- referred only to the U.S. While we do appear to have an obscene and growing disparity between the have-it-alls and the have-nothings, we do still have a vast majority of our population that can count on electricity being generated 24/7 and there being reasonably potable water and so on. And we tend to take these things for granted that in many parts of the world are available only to a few. So while we complain about corruption in government and stolen elections and lying media, there isn't much movement in the direction of violent revolution because the majority is physically pretty comfortable and figures they really have more to lose through revolution than they have to gain.

I'm not sure that in some third world nations -- and I use the term loosely -- there is as much a "code" between the elites and the masses as there are both oppression and threats of more oppression, all backed with the power to enforce, as well as limited access to the tools of revolution on the part of the masses.

Iraq appears to be an example: Under Saddam, they had reasonable expectations of basic services like water, electricity, education, security. Yes, they came at a price, and Saddam used force and threats of force to maintain his position, but there was no uprising until the Americans came in and the infrastructure collapsed . I suspect that if the initial invasion force had maintained the power grid, the water, the oil infrastructure, and security, we wouldn't have the hellhole we have now.

It's when people have (or think they have) little or nothing to lose that they're willing to lose it.

Tansy Gold

There is a code. I think we can say there is a class system in latin America where certain families have managed to gain control of most of the resources. But the class system bleeds between income tiers, socially, because of a culture that believes in extended families. That's something that's not as common in the U.S. Also, the Catholic Church has been far more successful in instilling a sense of duty to help the poor. The poor are essential in that style of class system, because the rich can only stay rich as long as they have a depressed labor force. Thus, the rich have their noblesse oblige instilled in them. To be less than humble in such a small community would not be prudent.

So, what I'm saying is, that the poor play a role and this tendency to blame the poor for their lot in life is an American Republican invention. No wealthy latin American would do that with the intention of turning their back on such a choice labor force, because they know that a Che or a Fidel Castro might become popular among the masses and it would lead to revolution.

So, yes, there is no revolution in America as long as there is plenty of electricy to boil water and run the t.v. But if the poor and lower middle class ever do decide to unite politically, there could be passive change, working through the appropriate channels.