The new Mongolian horde

[Kurgan]

I hope some people realize that the results of American occupation destroyed mayor cultural treasures of humanity- traces of first civilizations.
More culture than America produced through her entire history!

Treasures Looted from Baghdad Museum Feared Lost
15.04.2003 [03:14]


Antiquities experts, dismayed that U.S. officials failed to heed their warnings to protect Baghdad's historic artifacts during the war, said on Monday they were concerned the priceless treasures looted from Iraq's main museum may never be recovered.

U.S. archeological organizations and the U.N.'s cultural agency UNESCO said they had provided U.S. officials with information about Iraq's cultural heritage and archeological sites months before the war began.

University of Chicago professor McGuire Gibson was among a group that met Pentagon officials several times and presented them with a list of archeological and other sites that should be protected, particularly the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

"We warned them about looting at the very beginning," said the archeologist who has worked extensively in the region. "I was assured it would be secured."

Now, he said, the loss was immeasurable.

"The Baghdad museum is the equivalent of the Cairo Museum. It would be like having American soldiers 200 feet outside the Cairo museum watching people carry away treasures from King Tut's tomb or carting away mummies," said Gibson.

The museum, which housed key artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia, which was among the earliest civilizations, was ransacked and its contents taken or destroyed in a wave of looting that has swept the Iraqi capital since the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's rule last week.

UNESCO's deputy director, Mounir Bouchenaki, said on Monday leading archeologists will meet in Paris on Thursday to seek ways to rescue Iraq's cultural heritage. They also plan a fact-finding mission to Iraq.

The State Department said in a statement on Monday that people handling the looted artifacts would be liable to prosecution under Iraqi and U.S. laws.

The U.S. military in Iraq has instructions to protect antiquities and a U.S. official, John Limbert, will take the lead in efforts to recover the objects, the statement said.

Sumer in southern Iraq was the home of the first known civilization and the first writing, in the late 4th millennium BCE. Subsequent Mesopotamian civilizations built the major cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon.

Gibson likened the museum's destruction to that of the famed library founded by Alexander the Great in Egypt that was destroyed more than two thousand years ago.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters the United States was concerned about the looting at the museum and was working to secure the facility.

"The United States understands its obligations and will be taking a leading role with respect to antiquities in general but this museum in particular," he said.

CUNEIFORM TABLETS ON EBAY?

Powell said the U.S. would work with UNESCO, which earlier urged the U.S. and Britain to take immediate steps to protect and preserve a heritage considered to be "one of the richest in the world."

A 1954 Hague Convention mandates protection of cultural property during conflict, an international group of archeologists and antiquities experts warned before the war. While Iraq had ratified the convention, the United States and Britain, both partners in the war in Iraq, have not.

Of the more than 170,000 objects in the museum were treasures like an alabaster Uruk Vase that dates back to 3500 B.C., Gibson said.

The museum also held tablets of cuneiform writing that still had to be translated.

"We understand most of the best pieces are gone," said the Archeological Institute for America's Patty Gerstenblith, adding she heard looters cut off heads of larger statues that could not be moved.

Some items have already reportedly shown up for sale in Paris, Gibson said. Two markets for the items would exist: collectors willing to pay millions for the high-end items and others who would pay much less for smaller items like pottery.

"Average kind of pottery could well sell on (the Internet auction site) eBay for like $20 or $50," Gerstenblith said, adding small pieces have been smuggled out of Iraq during the U.S. economic embargo.

Experts are trying to set up a Web site to provide a catalog of what was in the museum in Baghdad and Gerstenblith said they were appealing to the White House to take emergency measures to order troops to be on the lookout for artifacts.

In the meantime, the loss of objects with not only historical and cultural, but scientific and religious value, was devastating, Gerstenblith, a DePaul University professor said:

"We have allowed to be destroyed not only our own heritage but the heritage of future generations."
????????: Niala Boodhoo/Reuters

http://www.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_arti...d=2999&lang=en

[DevilMan]

and I hope you realize that while tragic indeed, the Americans had no idea this would happen and further note that it wasnt Americans who did the looting.

The artifacts will be recovered.

[Heydrich]

. . . Among the National Museum's treasures were the tablets with Hammurabi's Code — one of mankind's earliest codes of law. It could not be immediately determined whether the tablets were at the museum when war broke out. . . .

You are right Kurgan. The vile cultureless Yankee barbarians are destroying the birthplace of civilization itself just like half a century ago when they annihilated some of the oldest and cultured cities in Europe. It reminds me of a recent story I just heard about in the news. The Yankee savages also pillaged the Southland of priceless treasures in one of their many wars. . .

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI has recovered a valuable copy of the Bill of Rights that had been missing for 138 years, bureau sources said Wednesday.

The document, one of 14 copies of the Bill of Rights commissioned by President George Washington, is worth an estimated $30 million, the FBI said.

It was stolen from the North Carolina Statehouse by a Union soldier during the Civil War, officials said. "A carpetbagger took it in 1865," said one official. "It's really priceless."

The document was recovered by the FBI in Philadelphia on Tuesday in an undercover operation when an individual attempted to sell it, officials said. The copy is believed to have been in North Carolina in recent years, but officials were uncertain where it had been for most of the past 138 years.

The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. It was demanded by many states as a condition to ratifying the Constitution. They were ratified in 1791.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/19/bill.of.rights/

[Dreamer3k]

Originally posted by Kurgan
I hope some people realize that the results of American occupation destroyed mayor cultural treasures of humanity- traces of first civilizations.
More culture than America produced through her entire history!

i don't get the last part of that. you do realise that the american culture as we know it today has only been around for the last 400 or so years. so that statement was comparing two things which cannot be fairly judged by the other's standards

but yes, it is a true shame that by one man's judgement, so much of our history has been lost.

[Heydrich]

i don't get the last part of that. you do realise that the american culture as we know it today has only been around for the last 400 or so years. so that statement was comparing two things which cannot be fairly judged by the other's standards but yes, it is a true shame that by one man's judgement, so much of our history has been lost.

There is no such thing as an "American" culture.

[Dreamer3k]

Originally posted by Heydrich
There is no such thing as an "American" culture.

what do you define culture as?

[Heydrich]

what do you define culture as?

The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.

There is no such thing as an "American" culture. At no point in history has there ever been an "American" culture. There is no "American" way of life - a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts held in commom throughout the area that is the United States. America has never in all of its history ever had a true national character. What in fact exists in America is several cultures held together by a dominant one. Occasionally these cultures change roles and one of the subordinate cultures takes over the leadership role and subordinates the others calling itself the "American" culture.

Here is one of many manifestations of this fact:

[Kurgan]

The man in charged for security of the museum was threatened to be surrendered to Americans as "Sadams agent" if he reports the destruction of the museum second time to Americans.


The damage is irreparable.
Some of the destroyed texts did not lasted long enough even to be studied and translated. And no money can restore it anymore.

We are truly living in the age of darkness.

[Dreamer3k]

Originally posted by Heydrich
The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.

There is no such thing as an "American" culture. At no point in history has there ever been an "American" culture. There is no "American" way of life - a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts held in commom throughout the area that is the United States. America has never in all of its history ever had a true national character. What in fact exists in America is several cultures held together by a dominant one. Occasionally these cultures change roles and one of the subordinate cultures takes over the leadership role and subordinates the others calling itself the "American" culture.

by that definition, very few countries in today's world have any form of culture.

i see culture, in much the same way as you, but for large countries, or where there are cultural divisions, i tend to follow the lead of the majority. so by my definition, and i'm sure the americans see it the same way, they do have culture. "Americana". fast food, fast cars, and that lot.

[Dreamer3k]

Originally posted by Heydrich
Here is one of many manifestations of this fact:

thats not culture, thats their political outlook

[Kurgan]

Originally posted by Dreamer3k


"Americana". fast food, fast cars, and that lot.

Original Americans are transplanted Europeans, and I doubt their mayor virtues would be such banal materialistic ethos. The destructive actions that we are witnessing in Iraq (or Dresden in the past) is not the fruit of creative European spirit or culture that original European founders of America possessed.

It reminds me more on the Jews of the Old Testament that destroyed Jericho - oldest city known to man.

[Heydrich]

by that definition, very few countries in today's world have any form of culture.

The majority of countries in this world are poorly constructed and artificial third world states. Many of their borders were arbitrarily set by the former imperial powers.

i see culture, in much the same way as you, but for large countries, or where there are cultural divisions, i tend to follow the lead of the majority.

There is no such thing as an "American" culture. America is a vast transcontinental empire of several distinct cultures held together by military force and the financial self interest of sectional elites. What is called "American history" is in fact the history of of the rise and fall within the Union of these distinct cultures and how the dominant element within the Union has projected itself and its own culture upon the nation as a whole and the world.

There has never been an American culture. Instead, early in American history two distinct cultures arose along sectional lines, one in the North out of Plymouth Colony anchored in Massachusetts and the other in the South out of Jamestown colony which later more or less grew into Virginia. As the American population grew as an aggregate these two different cultures began to push West in parallel directions, the North into the Northwest Territory and the South into the Mississippi Valley. In the early days of the United States, the Southern element predominanted in the Union. The American Constitution itself is nothing more than a pragmatic compromise between two distinct and very real cultures with different ethical, political, religious, and economic outlooks on the world. The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution itself for the most part are essentially Southern documents written by Southern men that reflect the Southern ideology of limited government and individual liberty. This reflects an even earlier division that goes way back into the history of the British Isles. The Northern colonies which later became states were initially populated predominantly by immigrants from England. The Southern colonies however were initially populated predominantly by Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants and other minority non-English populations from the British Isles. These populations retained their old world mores and social beliefs and established the two distinctive original regional cultures in America. There has never been a national "Melting Pot" in America. Instead, immigrants to the United States from Europe largely assimilated into the established regional cultures.

This shaky financial compromise embodied in the American Constitution between the Southern and Northern elites was preserved until the middle of the 19th Century (if only by a thread) when the American War Between the States erupted over competition between the two expanding cultures for territory from the Mexican Cession. This, above all other events in American history, was the defining moment in creating the America of the 20th Century. Up until the War Between the States the Southern element predominated and this was reflected in American foreign policy. America kept out of the business of the Old World for the most part and pursued a national policy of expansion (protested by the North) derived from the Southern impulse to acquire additional territory to complement its agricultural economy. Industrialization in the North and the rise of the Northern manafacturing economy in previous decades finally began to change the national balance of power within the Union between the two cultures. As the North cemented its capture of the national government from the Southern Culture reflected in the rise of the Black Republican Party the South bolted the Union and established its own national government.

The Northern culture was able to conquer the Southern fledgling government and with the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (reflecting the Yankee centralized government equality ideology) which it imposed with military force it assumed total and complete ascendency within the Union over the remnants of the annihilated South. The Southern culture was reduced to the vassalage role of a satellite and was further impoverished for decades afterwords by discriminatory tariff legislation designed to protect and feed the Northern manafacturing economy at its expense. There was no "Gilded Age" in the South.

For the next 100 years the Northern culture within the Union was the predominant element. The word "yankee" became synonymous with "American" to the world - rootless unrestrained consumer capitalism, cosmopolitianism i.e. "the Melting Pot" ideal, relentless arrogant self promotion, social liberalism, the egalitarian homogonizing ideology, Puritianism "dividing the world into good/evil" these are all things people confuse with America when they are actually in fact of Yankee origin - a specific part of America. All of these things were used to justify and rationalize Yankee imperialism and terror against the rest of the world such as the Open Door policy in China, the ruthless conquest of the Phillippines and Hawaii to open Asia to Yankee products, the conquest of Europe and the world system established thereafter. The "diversity" and "multiculturalism" doctrines are just another example. They originated out of the mass immigration experience of the North in the early 20th century.

Throughout all of these years the "Solid South" continued to develop in a direction opposed to the rest of America. Utterly annihilated in the War Between the States the war against the South continued in the "Reconstruction" period when the region was pillaged of trillions of dollars in wealth which permanently handicapped it for over a century. The destruction of the Southern States was even worse than the destruction of Germany in two World Wars in material terms. There was never any "Marshall Plan" in the South either. "Reconstruction" is not really an accurate term to describe what happened. The word "revolution" is more accurate in terms of how the structure of government was changed with the Reconstruction Amendments. Adapting to the satellite role it was now forced into the South made a deal with the North in the Hayes/Tilden election to regain control of the local governments upon which time the North withdrew its troops in exchange for recognition of Northern supremacy in the Union. For the next 100 years this compromise remained intact with the South participating in the imperial wars of the Yankees until the North began its Second Reconstruction. Sectional conflict flared up again over de-segregation with the Dixiecrat rebellion in the late 40's. The yankees later sent thousands of troops into the South on several occassions to crush dissent to their policies. This in large part caused the Southern culture to abandon the Democratic Party.

In the early 1970s the decline of the Northern culture within the Union began to set in just as the South began to decline from its leadership role in the 1830s. A dramatic population and economic shift began to the West and South which continues to this day. As the South and West ascended within the Union (symbolized by the Reagan Administration) the protectionist legislation which fed the North at the expense of the rest of the nation became increasingly dismantled. What is called "American Culture" today is a bizarre form of "New South" consumerism due to the internal immigration from the North combined with more social conservatism.

An interesting story indeed.

so by my definition, and i'm sure the americans see it the same way, they do have culture. "Americana". fast food, fast cars, and that lot.

These things are all of Northern extraction or their transplants in California.

[Man Of Kent]

Lovely Heydrich, wonderful essay.

Of course, you could just have pointed out that "America" doesn't actually exist and that "American" would actually refer to the continents of North and South America and that these two continents could never be described as having the same culture.

[Kurgan]

Its interesting to ad that Yankee union treated their Southern neighbor with same savagery just like all other enemies through History. Just remember Shermans shelling of Atlanta, Georgia.

[Dreamer3k]

Originally posted by Man Of Kent
Lovely Heydrich, wonderful essay.

you actually read that?