Michael Jackson vs Neda

The story of Tehran eloquently demonstrates that people don't want religion, they want the right to live free and in peace. We forget the Iranians at our own peril.

On the left, the man principally responsible for Neda's death. A Charlie Manson figure - hyperactive, grinning monkey face of a serial killer. On the right, a beautiful young woman with dreams.

But, the world's attention is already fading, this morning our media mourns the loss of an entertainment figure named Michael Jackson, a warped Christ figure, the symbol of an unnamed religion which rules the minds of the West.

Who is this man?

Who is this man?

When the eminent visiting Baghdad professor gave her guest lecture, she referred to the American liberation of Iraq. Actually, you must mean the American occupation, don't you? No, I meant liberation. "If you knew what life was like under Saddam, you wouldn't call the arrival of the Americans an occupation. Things are infinitely better now."

That muted the enthusiasm of the questioner, an enlightened "global historian". Which brings us to Uday, In October 1988, at a party in honor of Suzanne Mubarek, wife of the Egyptian president, Uday murdered his father's personal valet and food taster, Kamel Hana Gegeo. Rumour has it that the dirty deed was done at the request of his mother. Before an assemblage of horrified guests, an intoxicated Uday bludgeoned Gegeo with a cane, reputedly administering the coup de grâce with an electric carving knife. Gegeo had recently introduced Saddam to Samira Shahbandar, a younger woman who later became Saddam's second wife. Uday considered his father's relationship with Shahbandar an insult to his own mother.

There's a lot of fighting going on inside Baghdad's parliament, but things have improved, and nobody can remember Uday, outside of his immediate victims.