A big thanks to Saddam
QUESTION
Is it true that in 1980 Saddam Hussein was given the keys to the city of Detroit, U.S., after donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to a local church? Yes. Chaldean Town is the neighbourhood in Detroit founded in the Twenties by immigrants from Turkey and Iraq — part of what is known as the Chaldean-Assyrian diaspora — who came to work in the automobile factories.
In 1979, the Reverend Jacob Yasso of the Chaldean sacred Heart publicly congratulated saddam Hussein when he became President of Iraq on July 16, 1979.
Yasso was born in Telkaif, Iraq and after high school, went to Rome where he completed his masters degree in philosophy and theology. He was ordained in 1960 and in 1964, he was appointed to serve the growing Chaldean community in Detroit.
In response to Yasso’s congratulations, saddam sent the church a gift of $250,000, even though he was a sunni Muslim.
Hussein gave away $10 million in donations to U.s.-based Chaldean and Assyrian Churches, which was widely interpreted as a ‘bribe’. The Iraqi government handed out $1.7 million to Chaldean Churches in the Detroit area alone.
In 1980, along with about 25 people from Detroit’s Chaldean community, Yasso was a guest of the Iraqi government and arrived in Baghdad. This is where he presented saddam with the key to the city from thenmayor of Detroit, Coleman Young.
Mayor Young was the first African American mayor of Detroit, serving in that post from 1974 to 1994. He displayed little interest in international politics and would routinely dismiss world leaders with names such as ‘mean sucker’ or ‘old prune-face’.
Young handed out more than 100 keys in his 20 years as mayor, and it’s unlikely he gave much thought to making Hussein an honorary citizen.
In Baghdad, saddam graciously accepted the honour and asked Yasso: ‘I heard there was a debt on your church. How much is it?’ Yasso said it was for $170,000. saddam gave him a cheque for $200,000, enough to pay the debt and build a new church hall.
At the time of the donations, saddam was an ally of the U.s. and the government supported, and possibly helped supply, his war with Iran. In 2003, the FBI accused certain Chaldean and Assyrian immigrants living in Detroit of providing information to the Ba’ath regime. Simon Fisher, Cardiff.
QUESTION What is the origin of words ending in ‘-udgeon’, e.g. bludgeon, dudgeon and curmudgeon?
All three words are etymological mysteries. ‘Dudgeon’, a state of anger or offence, appeared in about 1573. some etymologists have tried to link it with dygen, a Welsh word that means malice.
It is more commonly held to be a word describing a slim dagger hilted with native boxwood, known as dudgeon, hence the name dudgeon — dagger.
It appears in this sense in shakespeare’s Macbeth (1600): ‘I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before.’
Today the phrase is usually in the form in ‘high dudgeon’. The first example of ‘high’ and ‘ dudgeon’ linked together are in Hudibras (1663), a mock heroic poem by samuel Butler: ‘When civil dudgeon first grew high, / And men fell out they knew not why; / When hard words, jealousies, and fears, / Set folks together by the ears.’
The word ‘curmudgeon’, a bad-tempered or surly person, also originated in the 1570s. The earliest known use of the word can be found in Richard stanyhurst’s A Treatise Contayning A Playne And Perfect Description Of Irelande, which appears in the 1577 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles: ‘the feare of his [her nephew’s] daunger mooued hir to annere to such a clownish Curmudgen’.
etymologist Anatoly liberman suggests a Gaelic etymology, from muigean, ‘a churlish, disagreeable person,’ plus the intensifier car-, meaning ‘twist, bend’.
Bludgeon is first recorded in Naithan Bailey’s 1730 dictionary as ‘a short club’, while its first recorded use in running text (1755) is to the point: ‘These villains . . . knocked him down with a bludgeon’. later used for the act of beating someone.
‘Gudgeon’, a small fish used for bait, as well as a gullible person who’ll swallow anything, has a clear pedigree: it comes from goujon, the French word for the fish, which is from gobius, the latin for it. Mike Brown, Darlaston, West Midlands.
QUESTION Was the nose art on some World War II planes commissioned from well-known artists or did the aircrew paint it?
FURTHeR to earlier answers, the previous picture shows the nose art on 620 squadron’s Mk IV short stirling Glider. This was based at leicester east airfield from November 1943 to March 1944 when the squadron moved to Fairford, Gloucestershire.
My late father, the plane’s ‘Chiefy’ Flight sergeant in charge of ground crew, arranged for the nose art to be designed by World War I cartoonist and writer Bruce Bairnsfather, originator of the ‘Old Bill’ stories and cartoons. He sent a template to be copied or transferred to the nose of the plane. The bottles (pictured) signified missions flown. Its pilot was Tom Herbert according to Jonathan Falconer’s excellent book stirling In Combat.
Falconer’s book includes other examples of nose art, including my favourite semper in excreta (Always in the s**t!) on a 149 squadron stirling. Tim Norton, Melton Mowbray, Leics.