deathmtn

I had left Iraq nearly two decades prior, but my family was still there and I had intimate knowledge and updates, and witnessed some of the players from the 1960s while I was still there. My family, like many others, was the recipient of that cruelty, having two close family members executed by Saddam’s regime in the early 1980s.

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The arts and the media are one of the primary targeted institutions attacked by dictators. We are not living in a potential dictatorship. We are witnessing the early stages of dictatorship on a daily basis, in a broad swath of areas from the most private to the more public, from the social to the educational and economic and other aspects of our lives. The speed of this demolition of institutions, the Constitution, and legal norms is breathtaking.