RAMONES!!!

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...&w=RTR&coview=
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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 on offer was disturbingly named "Real Raping."


The fall of Saddam Hussein liberalised Iraq's cinema industry overnight.


Pornographic movies which 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.


With no Ministry of Information censorship department to get round any more, most Baghdad cinemas are now showing primarily "romantic" and "sexy" films as Iraqis euphemistically call soft- and hard-core movies respectively.


The few places trying to maintain respectability have been forced to mix their bill to include a few crowd-pulling blue movies to cover costs.


"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.


"Just 50 people a day come in for good films. Hundreds come for the 'romantic' ones. We must go with the market."


The open proliferation of mainly U.S. and European-made porno films, and the pavement posters advertising them, has shocked Iraq's religious leaders.


They hope the novelty factor will wear off and a new Iraqi government -- which the postwar U.S.-led occupiers are struggling to get in place -- will re-impose restrictions such as age-limits for cinemas and a ban on nudity.


"SINFUL" CINEMAS THREATENED


"A revolution or a big change like the one we had with the end of Saddam is like a flood," said Mohammed Saleh Al-Ubaidi, a 73-year-old Sunni Muslim imam whose Baghdad mosque is a stone's throw from Saadoun Street.


"It brings a lot of trash and wood with it, but then soon after clear water comes. That is what we hope for Iraq...Under Saddam, there was prohibition only. Now there must be persuasion too."


Some among the majority Shi'ite Muslim community are already taking matters into their own hands.


In the mainly Shi'ite south, for example, Basra's three cinemas closed for two weeks after young men on motorbikes turned up warning that if they showed "sinful" movies they would be burned down.


When they re-opened, sex was off the agenda and it was back to Arabic movies and U.S. action films -- the staple of prewar cinema bills.


One cinema manager, who asked not to be named for fear of provoking the clerics, recounted the dangerous games he used to play under Saddam.


"We had to take films for approval to the Ministry of Information, where they could say 'no' or cut out the bad parts," he said. "But we paid bribes to keep the hot shots in. Or, if they cut them out anyway, we would go somewhere else to buy them and put them back in again."


Now operating freely, his Baghdad cinema was plastered with raunchy posters of U.S. sex symbol Pamela Anderson and pop star Christina Aguilera. On show were the film version of British author D.H. Lawrence's explicit novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and a seedy-looking Italian film "Love, Pleasure and Romance."


Faris Sami, who owns a shop selling films on CDs -- including a fair sprinkling of "romantic" and "sexy" films -- is worried about the corrupting effect on teenagers and would like to see some restrictions back.


But he is relieved not to be running the same risks as before when he and his business partner would secretly sell sex films to trusted clients and friends.


"Uday (Saddam's son) had a big campaign a couple of years ago. They put my partner in jail for three months," Sami said in his Baghdad shop. "For them, everything was allowed. For the people, everything prohibited."

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what can i say?

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Cynthetiq

Stern talked about this... they just wanted good porn... and now they have it.

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Leviathan[NCV]

Poor bastards...

johnnymysto

'Romantic' movies - that's so funny. Aw honey, look - he just shot his wad all over her face. That's so romantic.

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CrazySaturn

Ohhh, but with actual porn going there now where am I going to get World's Sexiest Veils 3???

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What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck...I can't remember how it ends, but your mother is a whore!

The_Dude

good for 'em

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"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

Thraeryn

Excellent line. Thanks for the laugh.

As far as the topic goes, I wish religions weren't so hard-set against porn. I guess they have to have something they can use to control folks.

Halx

GIVE ME PORN
OR GIVE ME DEATH!!!

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spectre

Awesome line. It's not surprising though, have that repressed of a culture, then give them freedom, that's what will happen.

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I will be different" ~ Machine Head

Lyaec123

HAHA, well think about it... if you had never been able to check out a little of that before what would you do when you finally had the opportunity? I dunnoa bout some of the titles though, sounds a little sketchy to me...

steveincolumbus

send them everyones used pono's

Johnny Rotten

This is what sexual repression does to people.

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Battlefield

lol a bunch of guys on motorbikes show up demanding the sinful cinemas shut down.

I'd hate to see how they treat people who are considered more deviant than those who watch/produce porno...

phoenix1002

Now all we have to do is provide them with all the Soma they want, and we'll have our newest batch of menial laborers completely under our control...

Oh wait, this isn't Brave New World, is it?

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I'd rather be climbing...

I approach college much like a recovering alcoholic--one day at a time...

viejo gringo

with all the AK47's and RPG's they have available over
there, I don't think I would want to ride up on a motorcycle
and yell anything at anybody---in an Abrams tank, maybe...

jimk

ummm........is this from experience? wishful thinking?

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Macheath

Enjoying the brief respite between porn being banned by Saddam's regime and porn being banned by Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse.

Good for them.

anleja

Wait until they log on to Tilted Forum

ARTelevision

Yes.
Underneath all this, we get a view of rapid social evolution happening to these people. This is the sort of thing that finally toppled and humanized the Soviet Union.

It's a fascinating thing to think about. On the one hand, there's the clash of values and the incidental issues of "quality" as per arguments about the "redeeming social value" of pornography. On the other hand, there's the way in which it subverts socially-sanctioned repressive force which has proven to be most destructive and brutal to humanity.

The message behind it all is Freedom, isn't it?

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water_boy1999

Well its about time. I can see the headlines now, "America Blamed for Pornographic Proliferation In Iraq".

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Doh!!!!


-Homer Simpson

Esoteric

Good for them

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Caught a rush on the floor from the life in my veins

Slims

That's great. It's probably also a great way to liberalize Iraq.

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"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

SkanK0r

I was thinking the same thing, Greg.

rainheart

The biggest deal about all this to me is age restriction for these movies.

I bet once they get proper government and all that jazz they'll restrict viewing these movies to people 18 or older, and kids will just view them despite what the law says anyways, like practically the rest of North America and Europe...

Fire

aaahhh- we bring not only the end of an oppressive reign of terror- Iraqi people, we bring you PORN

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