When Philippe and I hooked up on Friday, he reminded me that Baghdad lies in the center of what was once Mesopotamia. How tragic that the cradle of the world's oldest civilizations be treated with such calamitous disrespect.
By the way, all this hypocrisy surrounding the opulence of Saddam Hussein's palace is nauseating. Do rich people here in America gauge the poverty of their fellow Americans before they decorate? And do rich people here invite the poor into their homes when the camera isn't rolling? Whatever ...
- How To Lose American Citizenship
- Museum's treasures left to the mercy of looters
- Looters grab priceless objects from Iraqi museums
- U.S. Forces Provoke Civil War In Baghdad
- Muslims rescue Baghdad's Jewish community center
- Iraqi Christians Look Ahead to Uncertain Future
Also, my poem Peace Is is today's feature on keithboykin.com! Awwww shucks now!
Donald, I was an Art Minor in college. I spent hours upon hours in dark slide rooms memorizing the names, places and dates of all the antiquities from Mesopotamia.
I cried watching the news of the looting of the National Museum. The Tablets of Ninevah are gone. These were the first records of organized government. Everything is gone and the U.S. did nothing to protect the museums, the banks and the universities.
Bush has destroyed a civilization, bringing to mind the capture of people from Africa and wiping out their history. After the elation of Saddam being gone wears out, the Iraqis will cry as I did, realizing that the records of the origins of their people have been destroyed.
I too think the looting of the museum a tragedy. However, I think that Saddam and his bunch did it. In short order this stuff will show up on the black market.
Further, I can’t help but feel that the REAL looting of Iraq’s heritage occurred during the brutal murderous oppressive regime within which people were slaughtered like cordwood.
Enough tragedy to go around that is for sure.
As to Saddam’s palace…I sure would love to see regime change come to the materialistic mindset that enslaves so many of us. But I do think there is a significant difference. Most Americans gained their wealth through hardwork and saving. But Saddam gained his by stealing, murder, and oppression. To live in an opulant palace built with money you earned but probably should use for a higher purpose is base and lacking vision. To live in a palace built on the blood and backs of your own people is flat evil.
I would say that slavery can be attributed to the vast majority of wealth in America. When Black people were legally defined as being less than human. And not just individuals were murdered, whole generations were slaughtered without record and without conscious.
I think we have PLENTY of liberation work here at home to keep us busy for a LONG while …
I agree Donald - the vast wealth of America - and for that matter Europe as well, was due to the rape of civilizations. Slavery in America built the agrarian wealth in the U.S. - the tobacco industry and the cotton industry were built on the backs of black men, women and children.
For my own people, the obscene wealth of the European Renaissance was funded by the rape and theft of the wealth of gold and other resources in Latin America. The infusion of wealth during the Renaissance did not just appear out of nowhere, or because people were “working really hard.”
You guys are pretty funny….I just got home from a long hard day on the garbage route….making money, and I did not see one slave alll day….I must admit I just stayed in my small town of 30,000, though.
My last post here. I mistakenly thought you were serious thinkers….now I think you just need to grow up and get a life.
Have fun, and post what you want, for I will never read it. GOD BLESS THE USA!!!
Budd, you feel threatened by the truth - and perhaps your role in it. That’s why you feel the need to flee.
So, if critical thinking frightens you, particularly thinking that’s critical of this country, then by all means go. I guarantee heat, and it will get too hot up in here for you.
Have a great life!
Budd needs to smoke some righteous bud.
Mr. Anzi: all of this BS was predicted months ago by us progressives. The worst is yet to come. Watch out for ethnic clashes in the north, the continued looting of the entire nation and how the blowback effect will singe us like a mofo.
Hate to say it: I told ya so.
dat was so sad!
[plug, but for a good cause]
Hi, I just wanted to pass on the word about a pretty unique peace-activism site, FacesForPeace.org, where people are posting their photos and antiwar statements in one place, kind of an “online peace rally” (this war may be about over but the conditions for future preemptive, near-unilateral wars are obviously still in place). Hope you can check it out, if you like it please spread the word.
peace, tim
http://www.facesforpeace.org