<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> 	<title>ARN HUB</title> 	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="hub.css"> </head>  <body class="out">   <table cellspacing="1" class="menu"> <tr> <td rowspan="6"><img src="hub2.jpg" width="232" height="166" alt="hub" border="0"></td> <td class="link" colspan="7"> network::channels </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=1" title="artinfo">1</a></td> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=2" title="syndicate">2</a></td> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=3" title="thingist">3</a></td> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=4" title="asco-o">4</a></td> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=5" title="spectre">5</a></td> <td class="channel"><a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=6" title="xchange">6</a></td> <td class="channel"></td> </tr> <tr><td class="link" colspan="7"> network::spiders </td></tr> <tr> <td class="channel">1</td> <td class="channel">2 </td> <td class="channel">3 </td> <td class="channel">4 </td> <td class="channel">5 </td> <td class="channel">6 </td> <td class="channel">7</td> </tr> <tr><td class="link" colspan="7"> <a class="out" href="liste.php3?kw=1">user::keywords</a> </td></tr> <tr><td class="link" colspan="7"> <a class="out" href="liste.php3?lnk=1">user::links</a> </td></tr> </table> <br> <h1 class="titre">channel :: thingist</h1><table width="100%" align="center"><tr><td class="mailtitre">date:  Sat, 12 Apr 2003 18:52:06 -0400 <br>subject:  [thingist] looted museum, from nytimes <br>from: "t.whid" &lt;twhid[at]mteww.com&gt; <br>to: thingist[at]bbs.thing.net <br></td></tr><tr><td class="out">this article sheds more light on the subject, specifically, it details  <br> that the US military intervened but then let the looting go on. <br>  <br> quote from the article: <br> Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at  <br> President Bush. "A country's identity, its value and civilization  <br> resides in its history," he said. "If a country's civilization is  <br> looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to  <br> President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the  <br> Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation." <br>  <br> ++ <br> April 13, 2003 <br> Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure <br> By JOHN F. BURNS <br>  <br> BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 12  The National Museum of Iraq recorded a  <br> history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains  <br> of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops  <br> entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's  <br> government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be  <br> destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters. <br>  <br> The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum only came to  <br> light today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital  <br> over the previous three days began to ebb. <br>  <br> As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn  <br> out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat of the  <br> Iraqi spring, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign  <br> journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River.  <br> They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the  <br> greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history. <br>  <br> A full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The  <br> museum had been closed during much of the 1990's, and like many Iraqi  <br> institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein. <br>  <br> So what officials told journalists today may have to be adjusted as a  <br> fuller picture comes to light. It remains unclear whether some of the  <br> museum's priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, some of its  <br> ancient stone and ceramics, and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and  <br> gold-overlaid ivory, had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere  <br> before the looting, or seized for private display in one of Mr.  <br> Hussein's myriad palaces. <br>  <br> What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum  <br> and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend  <br> floor after floor into unlighted darkness had been completely ransacked. <br>  <br> Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American  <br> troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that  <br> they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured  <br> into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on  <br> Friday, with only one intervention by American troops, lasting about  <br> half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday. <br>  <br> Nothing remained, museum officials said, at least nothing of real  <br> value, from a museum that had been regarded by archaeologists and other  <br> specialists as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the  <br> Middle East. <br>  <br> As examples of what was gone, the officials cited a solid gold harp  <br> from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360 B.C. and started to  <br> crumble about 2000 B.C. Another item on their list of looted  <br> antiquities was a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the  <br> great Sumerian cities, dating from about the same era, and a collection  <br> of gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings, also from the Sumerian  <br> dynasties and also at least 4,000 years old. <br>  <br> But an item-by-item inventory of the most valued pieces carried away by  <br> the looters hardly seemed to capture the magnitude of what had  <br> occurred. More powerful, in its way, was the action of one museum  <br> official in hurrying away through the piles of smashed ceramics and  <br> torn books and burned-out torches of rags soaked in gasoline that  <br> littered the museum's corridors to find the glossy catalog of an  <br> exhibition of "Silk Road Civilizations" that was held in Japan's  <br> ancient capital of Nara in 1988. <br>  <br> Turning to 50 pages of items lent by the Iraqi museum for the  <br> exhibition, he said that none of the antiquities pictured remained  <br> after the looting. They included ancient stone carvings of bulls and  <br> kings and princesses; copper shoes and cuneiform tablets; tapestry  <br> fragments and ivory figurines of goddesses and women and Nubian  <br> porters; friezes of soldiers and ancient seals and tablets on geometry;  <br> and ceramic jars and urns and bowls, all dating back at least 2,000  <br> years, some more than 5,000 years. <br>  <br> "All gone, all gone," he said. "All gone in two days." <br>  <br> An Iraqi archaeologist who has participated in the excavation of some  <br> of the country's 10,000 sites, Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad, said he had  <br> gone into the street in the Karkh district, a short distance from the  <br> eastern bank of the Tigris, about 1 p.m. on Thursday to find American  <br> troops to quell the looting. By that time, he and other museum  <br> officials said, the several acres of museum grounds were overrun by  <br> thousands of men, women and children, many of them armed with rifles,  <br> pistols, axes, knives and clubs, as well as pieces of metal torn from  <br> the suspensions of wrecked cars. The crowd was storming out of the  <br> complex carrying antiquities on hand carts, bicycles and wheelbarrows  <br> and in boxes. Looters stuffed their pockets with smaller items. <br>  <br> Mr. Muhammad said he found an American Abrams tank in Museum Square,  <br> about 300 yards away, and that five marines had followed him back into  <br> the museum and opened fire above the looters' heads. This drove several  <br> thousand of the marauders out of the museum complex in minutes, he  <br> said, but when the tank crewmen left about 30 minutes later, the  <br> looters returned. <br>  <br> "I asked them to bring their tank inside the museum grounds," he said.  <br> "But they refused and left. About half an hour later, the looters were  <br> back, and they threatened to kill me, or to tell the Americans that I  <br> am a spy for Saddam Hussein's intelligence, so that the Americans would  <br> kill me. So I was frightened, and I went home." <br>  <br> Mr. Muhammad spoke with deep bitterness toward the Americans, as have  <br> many Iraqis who have watched looting that began with attacks on  <br> government agencies and the palaces and villas of Mr. Hussein, his  <br> family and his inner circle broaden into a tidal wave of looting that  <br> targeted just about every government institution, even ministries  <br> dealing with issues like higher education, trade and agriculture, and  <br> hospitals. <br>  <br> American troops have intervened only sporadically, as they did on  <br> Friday to halt a crowd of men and boys who were raiding an armory at  <br> the edge of the Republican Palace presidential compound and taking  <br> brand-new Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other  <br> weapons. <br>  <br> American commanders have said they lack the troops to curb the looting  <br> while their focus remains on the battles across Baghdad that are  <br> necessary to mop up pockets of resistance from paramilitary troops  <br> loyal to Mr. Hussein. <br>  <br> Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at  <br> President Bush. "A country's identity, its value and civilization  <br> resides in its history," he said. "If a country's civilization is  <br> looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to  <br> President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the  <br> Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation." <br> -- <br> &lt;t.whid&gt; <br> www.mteww.com <br> &lt;/t.whid&gt; <br> -------------------------------------------------------------------- <br> t h i n g i s t <br> message by "t.whid" &lt;twhid[at]mteww.com&gt; <br> archive at <a class="out" href="liste.php3?n=3&body=736&go=http://bbs.thing.net">http://bbs.thing.net</a> <br> info: send email to majordomo[at]bbs.thing.net <br> and write "info thingist" in the message body <br> -------------------------------------------------------------------- <br> </td></tr></table>+OK Sayonara   </body> </html> 
