Word stuck in my head: 'bewilderment'...uh...huh...
currently reading: mayada; daughter of iraq
song of the moment: hey jude
i got access to a series of books on the predicament of people in the middle east through anindita. i've read four of them two explicitly highlighting the subjugation of women in saudia arabia narrated by a royal princess of saudi. it definitely makes a fascinating piece of reading. The books were was shocking, moving were full of elaborate sex and rape narrations. We were terrorized and the horrors still lay strong in our minds by the second book, the horrific incidents didn’t shock me as much desensitization..eh…. These books have gone on to become bestsellers. I just read mayada: a book about one woman’s survival in Saddam Hussein’s torture jail. It gives us a peek into iraq during saddam’s reign.
Leaders make interesting people and Saddam was an autocratic authoritarian. Apart from all the inhuman activities he encouraged, certain interesting aspects to him I thought i'd put forth. He was a romantic. He encouraged romantic writings by journalists.He was a man who loved clothes and appreciated the finer things in life. He changed designer suits five times a day. He was more like a village boy who was previously deprived but now found himself in a position to buy a house of fashion if he so desired. Unlike his other cousins, he was well mannered and made an attempt to be cultured. The inhuman activities carried out by his followers were unimaginable, horrendous and it’d still be a euphemistic way of describing it.
In any case, the whole idea of democracy as the best form of government has perpetually interested me. If an dictator is an altruist, benevolent man then it’d be the ideal scenario for the nation via unilateral decisions to make faster economic growth but it’ll probably be an idealistic situation most dictators are invariably autocratic. Democracy in that sense is the safer path as it’s been said democracy might not be the best form of government but the only possible form of govrenment
The inhuman activities carried out by his followers were unimaginable, horrendous and it’d still be a euphemistic way of describing it. In addition,these books also explicitly narrate various sexual escapades of the heavily patriarchal men. Anyway, Miriam was horrified that well, good bookstores like crossword had them under the ‘non-fiction section'. Her reasoning entertaining make popular reading especially as ‘sex sells’. Anyway was shocked to read that some countries have decided to adopt them in their syllabuses as they apparently promote women emancipation.

Desensitization by the media is a valid argument. On course, I realized that the atrocities and ostracization failed to effect as much. More often than not, the world knows, yet they choose to ignore.