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Erwin, for me this little video clip represented the banality of life under the Hussein family. Notice the way the servant (or whatever he was) delivered what seemed to be a clip for Uday's weapon. How the woman sitting next to him doesn't get up from the table but shifts away from him. She is probably accustomed to the shooting off a weapon at a party move. It seems that he puts in ear plugs -- slowly, methodically. Their table is almost empty. Maybe the dinner conversation had grown dull. Or maybe sitting with Uday is a risky proposition. So now Uday, like a little boy, sets out to reclaim to reclaim the attention of the crowd. Within seconds of the firing into the ceiling, the crowd is laughing a little too hysterically. The music is still playing -- it's just another party with Uday. Maybe your Dutch parties bear a similarity to this, Erwin, but for me, it was odd. And it made me contemplate that wonderful human quality of adaptability. How people carry on in spite of their day-to-day lives, scarcely noticing what to an outsider is extraordinary and abberant behavior. Then it also caused a mental replay of a recent article about Iraqis. How the author was against the invasion of Iraq from the get-go. How the Iraqis are the least civilized of Middle Easterners. How the idea of setting up a democracy in Iraq was the least likely place for such a concept to flourish. How other Arabs regard Iraqis as barbarians. And maybe how, if this has any basis in truth, what we see happening in Iraq today may be just Iraqis being Iraqis. Let me hasten to add, I DON'T KNOW. I know that firing guns in the air is not so unusual in some cultural senses. In Los Angeles it is a regular affair, come New Year's Eve, with warnings from city officials every year. "What goes up must come down," they announce. But compounded with what I'd already read and know about the Hussein Brothers, this video was a visual reminder of that earlier era. Not that Saddam was much better, but the video also had me thinking about how much things would have degenerated when/if either of those boys inherited the seat of power. All the brutality but without Saddam's ability to control. Susan
“Half a truth is often a great lie.” Ben Franklin
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