OMG. ISIS thugs take a hammer to civilisation: Priceless famous 3,000-year-old artworks smashed

[snagglepuss]

Effing unbelievable. Famous Ninevah artifacts destroyed. I effing hope these despicable ignorant assholes rot in hell.


snip


The extremist group has destroyed a number of shrines - including Muslim holy sites - in a bid to eliminate what it views as heresy.

Militants are also believed to have sold ancient artifacts on the black market in order to finance their bloody campaign across the region.

The video bore the logo of the ISIS group's media arm and was posted on a Twitter account used by the group.

Yesterday it was revealed how terrorists had blown up the Mosul Public Library, sending 10,000 books and more than 700 rare manuscripts up in flames.



Leading members of Mosul society reportedly tried to stop the fanatics destroying the building, but failed.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2970270/Islamic-State-fighters-destroy-antiquities-Iraq-video.html#ixzz3SrubPz9F
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Who hasn't ever seen this famous statue? Now its GONE along with many other priceless artifacts.

[niyad]

1. the taliban did something similar, and then there was the looting of the iraq museum while our

hired killers were guarding the oil fields. such hatred for civilization.

[salin]

3. I agree about the Taliban ... but I think the looting of the Iraq museum was more

to steal (for gain) rather than religiously/or intended-fear inducing motivated.

I wonder if the point is purely religious - or more terror related (I lean toward the latter) - as a warning. That even extremely valuable intiquities have no value and if the IS (or taliban in the earlier example) can do *this* they are capable of destroying anything/everything.

[niyad]

7. I think you have the right of it. pure terror.

[Drale]

29. The Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1326063/After-1700-years-Buddhas-fall-to-Taliban-dynamite.html

Extremists will destroy anything that interferes with there little world view or that they think will damage their "control".

[July]

40. Agreed, to them it's a show of their power.

it causes anger and anguish among those who don't share their views, and that effect is more valuable to them than anything else.

[hifiguy]

6. All religious fundamentalists hate knowledge.

Knowledge leads to questions. Can't have that.

[niyad]

8. sadly, you are correct.

[snagglepuss]

14. I really am fed up with whataboutry. Islam is not some divine revelation

It is a religion created by people and because it is a HUMAN CREATION it is FLAWED such as its stance on idolatry not to mention its arrogance as being the final word of its deity. The fuckers who have perpetrated this crime stated these were idols. They were destroyed because that is what is in a fucking book.

[Exhibit A]

15. Well said. n/t

[eissa]

16. And vaginas. Don't forget the vaginas.

They're petrified of them.

[snagglepuss]

20. Ironic that ancient Assyrians believed Ninevah to be the seat of the goddess Ishtar.

Perhaps t is not ironic perhaps these misogynist ignorant shitheads are aware of the link to the Goddess.

[eissa]

23. If these ignorant assholes couldn't figure out that

ISIS was the name of an Egyptian Goddess, I doubt they're sophisticated enough to know the history of Nineveh. I'm just numbed by their evilness. I shouldn't be given the history of what Assyrians have gone through at the hands of such merciless barbarians, including my own grandparents. But yet, here we are. Again.

[Dont call me Shirley]

27. Isis represents the divine feminine energy. Figures a bunch of controlling bullies would want to

usurp the divine feminine for their addiction to violence and violent power.

[yeoman6987]

34. Who are the hired killers you speak of?

[Exhibit A]

2. These people are a bottomless pit of depravity.

[hifiguy]

4. Even the Nazis, Stalin and

the Khmer Rouge did not sink to this absolute zero. Let that rattle around in your brain box for a while. Not even the fucking Khmer Rouge.

[randome]

5. All they need are stable jobs.

While there is something to be said for that in the microcosm of the Middle East, that doesn't explain these type of atrocities, against people and culture.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[closeupready]

9. I agree. Hoodlums throughout history often were simply the idle unemployed.

Give people jobs (and thus hope for the future), and you give them an investment in society (and its artifacts, history, culture, etc.).

Perhaps, on some level, that's the point of this destruction - sit around doing nothing, and the Western media ignores you. Do something provocative, and suddenly, the whole world is paying attention.

This is not an argument that I approve of any of this going on; it is, as I assume with you here, an attempt to identify a way of solving a problem here.

[snagglepuss]

10. Where's your proof they don't have jobs when 1000s of Western mMuslims with jobs

have joined the shits. What they stated categorically is that these are idols as per Koran. Where the fuck in the Koran does it say to value the kuffur culture? No where so I lay the blame on Islam. On its fucking arrogance.

[closeupready]

13. I refuse to engage with you, so later.

[Hutzpa]

11. I said this a while back on DU that

these assholes are not religious fighters but gangs acting as terrorist being sponsored by people whose interest is not the well being
of depraved people, but the protection of the 1% class around the world, better yet the cartels among the 1%. There actions so far
has not changed my thinking on this, I think it's time the powers that be start looking at it from this perspective.

[hifiguy]

12. I think this is very much motivated by

religion. Fundamentalist religion of all kinds is eternally hostile to knowledge, history and the existence of anything that can serve as a basis for questions or critique. It's the nature and basis of reductionist know-nothingism.

[Hutzpa]

17. Thugs are motivated by one thing and one thing only

MONEY! therefore I disagree slightly that they are fundamentals, because their actions has proven otherwise.

[hifiguy]

24. Looters don't blow shit up and destroy it.

They steal and fence it. Lunatics blow shit up.

[bklyncowgirl]

35. Isis is deep into the illegal antiquities market--this was probably too big to sell.

[CJCRANE]

19. Is it possible that this form of fundie religion is a new phenomenon

considering that these statues survived for thousands of years?

[randome]

21. Good point.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[riderinthestorm]

25. Then you haven't read this Atlantic article

No other explanation does justice to every reason for ISIS than this piece. I strongly encourage you to read it and then come back and argue this is simply about money.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

[eissa]

18. 100 years after the genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks

against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks, these savages continue the tradition. Wiping out Assyrian villages in the Khabour region of Syria and taking over 200 hostages, and now erasing their history in their ancient capital of Mosul (Nineveh.) Every day brings a new horror with these sub-human barbarians.

[brooklynite]

22. When I was in Syria 3 years ago, we has a chance to see a pristine 5,000 year old hittite statue...

Hate to think what ISIS would do with it...

[whatthehey]

26. But religion has nothing to do with it!

They just adopt iconoclasm out of resentment of British colonialism and the lack of economic opportunity! Because all disaffected purely economic underclasses are driven to destroy greaven images!

[Dont call me Shirley]

28. Causing outrage, stoking the war flames, following the global mic orders.

[closeupready]

33. Most people here don't get that.

But I do.

[Brigid]

30. That very photo has been a staple in Bible handbooks for decades.

Now the statue is just . . . gone?

[snagglepuss]

31. there are no words

[ck4829]

32. ISIS's version of Year Zero

In their eyes, history before ISIS is meaningless, they'd destroy things tied to Muhammad himself if given the opportunity.

[Karmadillo]

36. British and American Collusion in the Pillaging of Iraq's Heritage

Are the Americans and British responsible for the destruction described in this article (and those responsible for enabling ISIS through our criminal invasion of Iraq) also "despicable ignorant assholes" who should "rot in hell"?

https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/167/35661.html

British and American Collusion in the Pillaging of Iraq's Heritage
By Simon Jenkins
Guardian
June 8, 2007

Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument.

Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

<edit>

Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren. Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.

Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.

more...

[snagglepuss]

37. What has that travesty to do with this?

[dembotoz]

38. we are fortunate the spanish were so respectful when they moved into central america

i forget--what faith are they?

[snagglepuss]

39. How many years ago was that? This is just more pointless whataboutery.

The fact that the West progressed. We don't hack off limbs. We don't stone people. etc etc etc

[WinkyDink]

42. MUST we continue to look to depredations of CENTURIES AGO to implicitly excuse the PRESENT ones?

Archaeology wasn't even a "thing" back in the 16th C.

[WinkyDink]

41. I could kill every one of those destroyers with pleasure. Sue me; IDGAF.