Tea at Trianon: ISIS Destroying and Selling Priceless Artifacts

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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.)