HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- IRAQIS LAVISH PRAISE ON SADDAM TO MARK HIS 65TH
BIRTHDAY BAGHDAD, April 24 (AFP) - Public praise for President Saddam Hussein, "the eternal spring ... the sun of the Arabs", is scaling new heights as Iraq prepares to celebrate his 65th birthday on Sunday. Shopkeepers along Baghdad's Al-Saadun Street have hung banners extolling the virtues of their defiant president, who has been in power since 1979 and holds an array of posts from secretary general of the ruling Baath party to prime minister and commander in chief of the armed forces. "Saddam Hussein is the gift of Iraq", "Saddam Hussein is poetry and homeland", "Saddam Hussein is a great leader for a prestigious people", they read. "Happy birthday mister president," proclaims one banner draped at the entrance of the Sindbad cinema, which shows three films a day, two American and one Arab, for a single ticket costing 500 dinars (25 US cents). The sidewalk poster of US film star Demi Moore is appealing. "That's to draw in the clients, but erotic scenes in the film Striptease are censored," ticket salesman Iyad Mohammad explains. For Mohammad, who sells more than 100 tickets a day, Saddam's birthday is a "lucky occasion for all Iraqis because his achievements as leader of our country cannot be counted. "Every Iraqi" rejects US threats to topple Saddam's regime, he said as shoeshine boys stood idle nearby while an old blind man leaning on his cane sold boxes of matches and a toothless beggar persistently solicited passers-by. "We are all ready to defend out country." Washington, charging that Iraq is again developing weapons of mass destruction in the absence of international arms inspections, is threatening to overthrow Saddam. Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937 in Takrit, in the province of Salahedin, 170 kilometres (105 miles) north of Baghdad. Since the United Nations slapped a crippling sanctions regime on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990, Saddam's birthdays have assumed an increasingly grandiose scale. Inspired by Saddam's warrior-like, pro-Palestinian speeches, a cloth banner flaps across the entrance of a chemist shop: "Iraq is Palestine: a single people and a fight that continues against Zionism." "We mark the president's birthday each year, but this time we have highlighted Iraq's solidarity with the Palestinian people," said shop owner Zhafer Ahmad. "US threats do not scare us. Thirty-three states attacked us and we are still here," Ahmad said, referring to the US-led international coalition that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. That was the second war Saddam and his regime oversaw following the bloody 1980-88 conflict with Iran that left an estimated one million people dead. "A lot of medicine we can't import because of the embargo is today made in Iraq," Ahmad said, pointing to the stacked shelves of his small pharmacy. A little further away, yet another statue, recently erected in the middle of one of the capital's main roundabouts, is covered with a dust sheet but no one is in any doubt about what it is: a figure of Saddam will be unveiled during the birthday celebrations. The facade of the Iraqi National Theatre is covered in posters announcing the Saturday night premiere of the "Zabiba and the King" epic, an adaptation of a novel attributed to the Iraqi leader. "The birth of leader Saddam has been a Damocles' sword handing over the heads of Jews and Americans," according to a banner outside a restaurant opposite the theatre. Iraqi authorities have this year granted visas to dozens of foreign journalists, including several representing US television channels, to cover the birthday celebrations. The main party, attended by the Iraqi leadership, is scheduled to be held Sunday in Takrit. But Saddam himself is rarely seen at any of the myriad occasions and usually has the media report that he celebrated among school children at an undisclosed location. --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ |
