Monday, March 23, 2015

ISIS Destroying and Selling Priceless Artifacts

From Histories of Things to Come:
Breadcrumbs in the forest: last fall, while looking for Indian silk fabric on eBay, I noticed Syrian daggers for sale, scattered creepily in between the silk listings. Were they antiquities? For some time, reports that the Islamic State have been selling and destroying the precious archaeological and historical cultural heritage of the Near East. On 26 February 2015, after pledging a year ago that they would not do so, they destroyed Mosul's antiquities museum and library, displayed in sickening videos (below). In early March 2015, after looting the ancient palace, they bulldozed the antique city of Nimrud.

[....]

Conspiracy theorists insist that Islamic State is an arm of America, and stories about ancient plunder are false flags. This is naïve. For those who believe that western peoples and powers can be blamed for every act of savage violence that occurs in the world, I must sound naïve. To them, I would say: please reconsider your infinitely media-fied gnosticism, your stubborn conviction that there must be a higher power, a secret superior force controlling every outrage. Perhaps these videos are exactly what Islamic State propagandists say they are: the naked bid of Islamic State for higher power in the region, laying the foundations for full-scale attacks in Europe. Because media reports can be so easily manufactured today, and the IS publicity machine is so slick, people never believe a report is just a report; an event is just an event; an account is just an account; and that history is just history. We can't really be living this nightmare, can we? (Read more.)
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1 comment:

LC Douglass said...

Thanks for reblogging, much obliged! :)