A Day in the Life: 5/30/8 - A
prez
Free Americans Reaching Out to Amerika's Huddled Masses
Yearning to Breathe Free
Via <pr...@usa-exile.org>
May 30, 2008
Disneyland by the Tigris
by Felicity Arbuthnot
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Global Research, May 27, 2008
We are dancing on a volcano. Comte de Salvandy (1795-1856) Just
before the 1830 revolution.
Let them eat cake. Marie Antoinette.
Iraq, before the holocaustal thirteen year embargo, the 2003 illegal
invasion and subsequent countrywide massacre and reign of terror over
its population - not by a few bad apples of the US and British
army, but by an entire infested, diseased orchard was, according to
United Nations indices, a largely developed country.
Having nationalised its oil, revenues were utilised for modernising
infrastructure, health, education (the latter two of high standard
and free.) All now lie in ruins, the might of the two most
professional armies in the world, apparently able only to blow up
bridges, not build them, orphan not heal, bereave, destroy and
devastate, poison and pollute.
Iraq now lies at the bottom in every aspect of UN indices, its sick
untreated, its children uneducated, the cradle of civilisation
victim of a scorched earth policy from its agriculture, date and
citrus groves to its archeological wonders. The orphans, traumatised,
displaced, widowed, mutilated, beheaded, fleeing, stateless, dead, in
just five years, equal historys most chilling infamies.
From 1st June, add starvation. The food rations, already cut to the
barest minimum, of woeful quality, beset by (US overseen)
governmental corruption, but on which much of the population exists,
are to be abolished.
Additionally, in the nightmare scenario of everyday life in the
democratic freedom of occupied Iraq, is a vast unknown: the number of
amputees and limbless, those liberated from arms legs or both, by the
ongoing orgial use of an eye watering array of weapons, including,
allegedly, cluster bombs, from 1991 onwards. Hellfire and Maverick
missiles, guided Bomb Units (GBUs) Hydra-7- rockets, cannon rounds
(in a single operation on 28th January 2007, US F16s and A-10
Thunderbolt aircraft dropped more than 3.5 tons of precision
munitions but also fired 1,200 rounds of 2mm and 1,100 rounds of 30mm
cannon fire, in a five square mile area near the southern (holy) city
of Najav. (See Nick Turses meticulous: Did the US lie about
cluster bomb use in Iraq? 8th July 2007: http://www.aljazeera.com/
news/newsfull.php?newid=7905)
But in the true tradition of only in America fantasies, the US has
a make believe answer. Not refurbished hospitals and schools, not
clean water coming out of dysentery, typhoid and cholera inducing
taps, not welcoming and healing orphanages for the estimated 4.5
million traumatised orphans they have created, not centres for and
training of staff and technicians to provide prosthetic limbs for
maimed children and adults. Baghdad instead, is to have a Disneyland
theme park (on appropriated land.)
Iraqs daily realities of death, destruction and torture are
replaced by fantasies made in America.
The imagery and motion simulations intended for Iraqi children are
to provide a human face to the American invaders and breaking down
the reality between .. reality and dreams. The objective is to
replace reality with a dream world. (For full details of this
obscenity see: War Propaganda: Disneyland goes to war torn Iraq, by
Michel Chossudovsky : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=va&aid=8837)
A constant refrain during the embargo years, in media parroting
Washington and Whitehalls propaganda, was that the ever busy Iraqi
President, when not personally making fairy story weapons of mass
destruction, or throwing babies on bonfires, or putting fellow
citizens through shredding machines (that one courtesy of the reality-
challenged Ann Clwyd, M.P.,) was that he was building palaces whilst
his people starve. Culturally, it is incumbent upon leaders to leave
behind something more magnificent than their predecessor and in dark
times, they also provided work to a swathe of the population, as did
maintenance, care of and repair to historic sites, of whose
responsibility for and guardianship Iraqis are acutely aware.
That these great state buildings (and archeological wonders) are now
illegally squatted, by illegal invaders (in contravention of yet
another swathe of international law) seemingly does not strike
lawmakers by the Potomac or the Thames as either ironic or criminally
outside the laws provisions.
But now a land grab is about to take place comparable to the
purchase of Manhattan Island from the Lenapes Indians for $24 worth
of beads and trinkets in 1626, the best real estate deal in history.
In an agreement with the Mayor of Baghdad, the fifty acre Zawra
Park is to be developed into a trashy Disneyland by the Tigris,
complete with malls, hotels, housing, amusements, entertainment and a
museum. Iraqs National Museum with its millennias of treasures and
the National Librarys irreplaceable ancient volumes and manuscripts
were looted and destroyed under US watch in 2003. A replacement by a
Disneyland version is a concept devised by the seriously
psychologically challenged.
A skateboard park will introduce the residents of a city thought to
have been first settled eight thousand years before Christ, to the
culture of inner city USA. Announcing his plans in Baghdad, financier
Llewellyn Werner stated: Im not here because I think you are nice
people. I think there is money to be made here I wouldnt be doing
this if I wasnt making money.
Speculating as to what the agreement with the Mayor might have
been, might stray in to libel land. Zawra Park, however, has a
special place in the heart of Baghdadis. Its great zoo, summer
theatre, childrens game area, fountains, lakes, coffee shops,
restaurant, sculptures, monuments, and Olympic swimming pool, became
somewhat run down during the embargo, but nothing could take from its
great, expanses of lushness, its acres of ancient palms, royal
indeed, stretching skyward. Wonders in which generations of children,
become adult, become mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, great
grandmother had played and revisited throughout their lifetime.
Will Mr Werner and his RSE developers call in General Petraeuss boys
with chain saws to destroy groves which have witnessed hundreds of
years of Mesopotamias history, to make way for make believe tack?
General Petraeus is a big supporter of the project. And destruction
is his business.
The zoo in Zawra Park became one of the poignant symbols of the
embargo years. With every kind of diagnostic aid and treatment vetoed
for patients, by the UN, the needs of the zoo animals came low down
the priority list. But Dr Adil Salman Musa, zoo Director, loved them
all. He tried to create better conditions for the great brown bear,
whose mate had died for lack of treatment. Year after year, the bear
lay, seldom moving, except to occasionally roll in her great pool of
filthy water, repairs for pipes, impossible. She was clinically
depressed said Musa.
The lion too had lost his mate and his roars of grief rang across the
great Park, from within his spacious den. He refused to come out roam
between the sun dappled, abundant greenery of his territory.
Musa communicated with colleagues across the world for help with his
animals and birds, the swinging, chattering monkeys, the array of
vibrant coloured rare birds. But like the people, they were trapped
by the embargos all pervasive, silent decimation.
As parents took their children to the orphanages, unable to afford to
feed them, promising to collect them when the embargo was over,
families also took their domestic pets to the zoo, vowing the same.
Dogs and cats looked wistfully through the bars and canaries in every
paint box hue, perched on their indoor trees, tweeted and soared.
Iraqis have a passion for birds.
Dr Musa too dreamed of the embargos end, always planning for what it
would bring to his zoo, his improvements, and work with rare and
endangered species again with breeding programmes to swell their
numbers.
When one of the three remaining Bengal tigers, Mendouh, became ill,
Dr Musa somehow acquired enough vital antibiotics to inject her. But
there were no anesthetic darts available. I held her tail, while the
vet gave her the injection, he said, adding: This is a very
dangerous practice. He risked much for his beloved animals.
On 17th September 2003, six months into the occupation, American
soldiers had a drunken party in the park. One tried to feed the
Mendouh through the bars. Predictably, she bit him. The soldier shot
her.
And what has happened to the lynx? On one visit, rounding a corner, I
came on a surreal sight : a lynx, in a miniature carved palace,
carpeted, with adequate food, looking, I thought, distinctly smug.
Noting the plaque above the spacious area, the penny dropped. The
lynx was a gift to the zoo, on a recent anniversary, from Saddam
Husseins eldest son, Uday.
What happens if the lynx dies? I asked. The young zoologist walking
with me looked over his shoulder, then whispered: Madam Felicity, we
all run a very, very long way. I have written of Zawra Park before
and its resonance for Baghdadis, the sad, the surreal, the peace and
laughter of days spent there.
On 9th May, Dick Cheney, on the Paul Gallow Show in Mississippi, told
Americans that the proposed development was a sign that things in
Iraq were going swimmingly. The Pentagon is fast tracking this
development as a centrepiece for the new Baghdad in the new Iraq.
Legalities, as ever, have not appeared on the agenda. Pentagon backed
purloining of a vast swathe of municipal reality with the collusion
of the occupying forces is yet another shocking grand theft.
But a word of warning. The Islamic fundamentalists who the invaders
brought in with them, who behead women for wearing make up or western
clothes - or just not covering from head to toe - and abhor theatre,
art, dance, entertainment, music, alcohol, will not take kindly to
this project. Contractors should have up to date life in insurance. A
lot of heads will roll between conception and possible completion.
And about those 200,000 free skateboards, the Baltimore Project which
provides prosthetic limbs to Iraqi children, wrote, in July 1996, of
just one childs transformed life:
Not only can he now ride a bicycle like other boys his age, but more
importantly he can go to school. There are no wheelchair ramps in
Iraq, no buses equipped with lifts, no way to ease a child back into
the world after amputation.
The obscenity of this project - before limbs, wheelchairs, clean
water, hospitals, schools, sufficient food, decontaminating the
radioactive waste from weapons designated three times by the United
Nations, as weapons of mass destruction which litters the country and
the region from US and UK weapons - beggars belief. When Medical Aid
for Iraqi children sent children's wheel chairs after the invasion,
the US Army disappeared them. But with countless hundreds of
thousands of legless, limbless children, throughout Iraq, resultant
from their actions, not medical help, but free skateboards can be
funded.
Oh, and where do you put your elbow pads, when you have no elbows?
Battery Park in Manhattan is named after the British battery
stationed there, its monument marking the monumental disgrace upon
which New York City was founded. Hard to know what to call the modern
day equivalent, perhaps the Grand Theft Experience Park.
Suggestions welcome.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Felicity Arbuthnot
) Copyright Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=va&aid=9083
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