Blue Movies Proliferate in Post-Saddam Iraq

[Sticky]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Outside the cinemas on Saadoun Street, groups of men loiter round film posters of naked women, whose private parts are crudely super-imposed with underwear drawn in colored pen

Behind doors in Baghdad's main movie strip, there is no such teasing.


Barely a seat is empty as hundreds of men, most puffing cigarettes, sit in total silence and darkness to enjoy scenes of nudity and sex for 1,000 Iraqi dinars ($0.50) a time.

"Under Saddam, forget it. You would go to jail for showing or watching this," said movie-watcher Mohammed Jassim at the Atlas Cinema where one of the films shown was disturbingly named "Real Raping."


Pornographic movies that had circulated only secretly before suddenly came into the open. The smuggling of films from abroad became overt importing. And demand has proved high despite Iraq's strict Muslim morals
"We feel bitter and disgusted to show such pictures because this cinema has always shown good films. But if we don't, there is no money to pay our wages and rent," said Isaam Abdul Kareem, who has taken tickets for 20 years at Baghdad's prestigious Semiramis cinema.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030915/film_nm/iraq_cinema_dc_2

[GainesT1958]

1. But, hey, just wait 'till Ashcroft gets wind of THIS!

He'll have them all arrested and sent to Gitmo for...dealing in pornography! You know, not unlike some of those Shi'ite clerics, huh? :eyes:

B-)

[xray s]

2. I f Ashcroft really wanted to go after porn peddlers..

..he would have to arrest the CEO's of Marriot, Hyatt, Sheraton and Radisson....big GOP donors one and all.

Yeah...like THAT is gonna happen.

[Porcupine]

3. What happens to women after a war.....

is frequently as bad as the war itself. With AIDS war becomes the entry of a deadly cycle of poverty-prostitution-sickness-orphans-poverty-prostitution-etc. Unfourtunately the openness about sex that is needed to fight AIDS is difficult (not impossible) for islamic societies to deal with.