Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old July 8th, 2005 #1
lawrence dennis
Anti-anti-antisemite
 
lawrence dennis's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Rocky Mountains
Posts: 1,265
Default 'The Smash of Civilizations' by Chalmers Johnson

Does anyone have info on the likely racial makeup of ancient Mesopotamia? R Mac? A.E.?

The Smash of Civilizations

by Chalmers Johnson

Quote:
In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq's "patrimony" for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that -- Iraqi oil. In their "joint statement on Iraq's future" of April 8, 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair declared, "We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit." [1] In this they were true to their word. Among the few places American soldiers actually did guard during and in the wake of their invasion were oil fields and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. But the real Iraqi patrimony, that invaluable human inheritance of thousands of years, was another matter. At a time when American pundits were warning of a future "clash of civilizations," our occupation forces were letting perhaps the greatest of all human patrimonies be looted and smashed. There have been many dispiriting sights on TV since George Bush launched his ill-starred war on Iraq -- the pictures from Abu Ghraib, Fallujah laid waste, American soldiers kicking down the doors of private homes and pointing assault rifles at women and children. But few have reverberated historically like the looting of Baghdad's museum -- or been forgotten more quickly in this country.

Teaching the Iraqis about the Untidiness of History

In archaeological circles, Iraq is known as "the cradle of civilization," with a record of culture going back more than 7,000 years. William R. Polk, the founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, says, "It was there, in what the Greeks called Mesopotamia, that life as we know it today began: there people first began to speculate on philosophy and religion, developed concepts of international trade, made ideas of beauty into tangible forms, and, above all developed the skill of writing."[2] No other places in the Bible except for Israel have more history and prophecy associated with them than Babylonia, Shinar (Sumer), and Mesopotamia -- different names for the territory that the British around the time of World War I began to call "Iraq," using the old Arab term for the lands of the former Turkish enclave of Mesopotamia (in Greek: "between the [Tigris and Eurphrates] rivers").[3] Most of the early books of Genesis are set in Iraq (see, for instance, Genesis 10:10, 11:31; also Daniel 1-4; II Kings 24).

The best-known of the civilizations that make up Iraq's cultural heritage are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, and Muslims. On April 10, 2003, in a television address, President Bush acknowledged that the Iraqi people are "the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity."[4.] Only two days later, under the complacent eyes of the U.S. Army, the Iraqis would begin to lose that heritage in a swirl of looting and burning.

In September 2004, in one of the few self-critical reports to come out of Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication wrote: "The larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."[5] Nowhere was this failure more apparent than in the indifference -- even the glee -- shown by Rumsfeld and his generals toward the looting on April 11 and 12, 2003, of the National Museum in Baghdad and the burning on April 14, 2003, of the National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowments. These events were, according to Paul Zimansky, a Boston University archaeologist, "the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years." Eleanor Robson of All Souls College, Oxford, said, "You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale."[6] Yet Secretary Rumsfeld compared the looting to the aftermath of a soccer game and shrugged it off with the comment that "Freedom's untidy. . . . Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."[7]

The Baghdad archaeological museum has long been regarded as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the Middle East. It is difficult to say with precision what was lost there in those catastrophic April days in 2003 because up-to-date inventories of its holdings, many never even described in archaeological journals, were also destroyed by the looters or were incomplete thanks to conditions in Baghdad after the Gulf War of 1991. One of the best records, however partial, of its holdings is the catalog of items the museum lent in 1988 to an exhibition held in Japan's ancient capital of Nara entitled Silk Road Civilizations. But, as one museum official said to John Burns of the New York Times after the looting, "All gone, all gone. All gone in two days."[8]

A single, beautifully illustrated, indispensable book edited by Milbry Park and Angela M.H. Schuster, The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), represents the heartbreaking attempt of over a dozen archaeological specialists on ancient Iraq to specify what was in the museum before the catastrophe, where those objects had been excavated, and the condition of those few thousand items that have been recovered....

At a conference on art crimes held in London a year after the disaster, the British Museum's John Curtis reported that at least half of the forty most important stolen objects had not been retrieved and that of some 15,000 items looted from the museum's showcases and storerooms about 8,000 had yet to be traced. Its entire collection of 5,800 cylinder seals and clay tablets, many containing cuneiform writing and other inscriptions some of which go back to the earliest discoveries of writing itself, was stolen.[9] Since then, as a result of an amnesty for looters, about 4,000 of the artifacts have been recovered in Iraq, and over a thousand have been confiscated in the United States.[10] Curtis noted that random checks of Western soldiers leaving Iraq had led to the discovery of several in illegal possession of ancient objects. Customs agents in the U.S. then found more. Officials in Jordan have impounded about 2,000 pieces smuggled in from Iraq; in France, 500 pieces; in Italy, 300; in Syria, 300; and in Switzerland, 250. Lesser numbers have been seized in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. None of these objects has as yet been sent back to Baghdad.

The 616 pieces that form the famous collection of "Nimrud gold," excavated by the Iraqis in the late 1980s from the tombs of the Assyrian queens at Nimrud, a few miles southeast of Mosul, were saved, but only because the museum had secretly moved them to the subterranean vaults of the Central Bank of Iraq at the time of the first Gulf War. By the time the Americans got around to protecting the bank in 2003, its building was a burnt-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it. Nonetheless, the underground compartments and their contents survived undamaged. On July 3, 2003, a small portion of the Nimrud holdings was put on display for a few hours, allowing a handful of Iraqi officials to see them for the first time since 1990.[11]

The torching of books and manuscripts in the Library of Korans and the National Library was in itself a historical disaster of the first order. Most of the Ottoman imperial documents and the old royal archives concerning the creation of Iraq were reduced to ashes. According to Humberto Márquez, the Venezuelan writer and author of Historia Universal de La Destrucción de Los Libros (2004), about a million books and ten million documents were destroyed by the fires of April 14, 2003.[12] Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent of the Independent of London, was in Baghdad the day of the fires. He rushed to the offices of the U.S. Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau and gave the officer on duty precise map locations for the two archives and their names in Arabic and English, and pointed out that the smoke could be seen from three miles away. The officer shouted to a colleague, "This guy says some biblical library is on fire," but the Americans did nothing to try to put out the flames.[13]

----- SNIP -----

[The Role of the Jewish Art 'Collectors']


However, a more ominous indicator of things to come was reported in the April 14, 2003, London Guardian:Rich American collectors with connections to the White House were busy "persuading the Pentagon to relax legislation that protects Iraq's heritage by prevention of sales abroad." On January 24, 2003, some sixty New York-based collectors and dealers organized themselves into a new group called the American Council for Cultural Policy and met with Bush administration and Pentagon officials to argue that a post-Saddam Iraq should have relaxed antiquities laws.[16] Opening up private trade in Iraqi artifacts, they suggested, would offer such items better security than they could receive in Iraq.
__________________

How is the faithful city become an harlot! It was full of judgment: righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards.

Xian WN!

"The Jew can only be understood if it is known what he strives for: ... the destruction of the world.... [it is] the tragedy of Lucifer."

Holy-Hoax Exposed, Hollow-Cost Examined, How Low Cost? (toons)
 
Old July 8th, 2005 #2
Mr. T.H. Outis
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by lawrence dennis
Does anyone have info on the likely racial makeup of ancient Mesopotamia? R Mac? A.E.?
Semitische.
 
Old July 23rd, 2005 #3
banjo_billy
Banned
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: San Jose, California
Posts: 3,032
Default

The burning of the Archives and Koran collection was a Mossad operation. No Muslim or Iraqi would do such a thing. And the reports of the early looting of the Museum indicated a well-coordinated theft involving organized gangs who already had keys to the main galleries. Most likely, this was also Mossad since stealing from non-Jews is a Jewish commandment and the Jewish antiquities dealers are trying to open up a market for the goods that are already in Jewish hands.

It is one of the basic teachings of the Rabbis that the books of other religions should be burned. And it is part of the Jewish Swindle to destroy the history of all people so that only the history that the Jews claim to be real, is followed. Whether it is the lies of the Old Testament or the lies of the Holohoax, the Jews alone benefit but only if other people believe their lies.
 
Old July 23rd, 2005 #4
banjo_billy
Banned
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: San Jose, California
Posts: 3,032
Default

"Does anyone have info on the likely racial makeup of ancient Mesopotamia? R Mac? A.E.?"

Their racial make-up is not known precisely. It is known that they were NOT Semites. The Sumerians seem to have filtered down into the plains from mountainous areas in the area of Iran or farther to the North (Zagros Mountains?) "Sumer" means "South" so the People of the South were Sumerians. It is they who began the writing and temple building and agriculture that would create the whole Fertile Crescent area known by the Greek word, Mesopotamia.
 
Old July 27th, 2005 #5
_DC_
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by banjo_billy
Their racial make-up is not known precisely. It is known that they were NOT Semites. The Sumerians seem to have filtered down into the plains from mountainous areas in the area of Iran or farther to the North (Zagros Mountains?) "Sumer" means "South" so the People of the South were Sumerians. It is they who began the writing and temple building and agriculture that would create the whole Fertile Crescent area known by the Greek word, Mesopotamia.
I remember reading an interview with a Christian Iraqi. Apparently the Christians there are mostly Assyrians, and he said that once upon a time the whole area had been Assyrian and Christian. And that, he said, is why it was invaded by the Arabs. So ironically, if the Assyrians had been Muslims they might still have been in control of what is now Iraq.

Of course, noone can tell the difference between Iraqis and Assyrians or Syrians. They all look exactly the same. If there ever were any differences, they have disappeared a long time ago through miscegenation. But I bet the Assyrians love to imagine they are different, and superior, even though they're all more Arab than whatever.
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:20 PM.
Page generated in 0.59888 seconds.