One of the shortfalls of Iraqi school curriculum is that students are brought up studying mainly Islamic, Arabic and European histories, very little attention was paid to Mesopotamian History. In my time I remember being taught about the French revolution more than the Assyrians, Babylonians or The Sumerians. At school, we had to memorize the […]
My Iraqi friend was comparing the situation during the rule of Saddam to nowadays; he was saying there are positive signs now and went on to explain. He described an interview between an unknown journalist and a government minister in which the journalist had the guts to ask tough questions with impunity. He compared this […]
In January 2006 Iraqis went to the polls in order to elect a new government for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the incumbent prime minister, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, was chosen by his own faction by a margin of 1 vote, yet he clung tenaciously to his designate position for months. One plausible […]
According to some definitions, humor consists of incongruous events and situations. Incongruous means lacking in harmony or inconsistent; in a scientific experiment, boxes which look exactly the same were placed in line, all had the same weight except one which was either much lighter or heavier than the others. The subjects were asked to lift […]
A man in Baghdad calls the Ministry of Interior’s hot line, he says in panic: Hello, there are men from Al-Badr Brigade (militia) in our neighborhood, they are killing people, please come and help us. The man from the ministry answers: How do you know they are from Al-Badr? was it written on their foreheads? […]
Shakespeare wrote about human motivation, every play he wrote dealt with one motivation deeply, in detail and from different angles. Some say this is what makes his literature so great. Shakespeare emphasized the qualitative differences between motivations; each play identifies a motivation with different qualities almost incomparable with the others. His plays, and the motivations […]
