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By now, the image of a young woman lying in a Tehran street, her life ebbing from her body, is indelibly etched in the collective conscience of the world. Twenty-six-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan has become a symbolic martyr for the millions of Iranians confronting an oppressive government. It’s fitting that an innocent young woman’s death should be the rallying figure for the movement against a government whose laws treat women as second-class citizens. It is the fairer sex that has historically suffered the most under unjust, repressive regimes and although Agha-Soltan’s murder has attracted worldwide publicity, her death is just the latest...
Giving Voice to the Women of Iran
Saddam was the one who obliterated the Iraqi culture, etc. Prior to his regime, the desert did indeed 'bloom'.
Under Saddam, as is the case with all dictators, everything was laid waste that wasn't useful for continuing the regime or taken over for the dictator and his henchmen. The 'looters' of the museums were his followers. To a dictator, the only culture acceptable is that which furthers his own agenda. Relics from the past are often obliterated in order to secure his own present: culture is politics by another means. If it wasn't about Saddam, it just...wasn't. His palaces are now largely converted to public buildings. They are trying to rebuild.
Anyway, we are where we are. The Iranians...