Arab springs eternal;
The fire that broke out in a Cairo library that houses thousands of rare documents raised concerns over the government’s and the army’s ability to protect historic sites at times of upheaval and drove several experts to warn of a possible intervention by foreign entities to preserve the heritage at risk.
Legal and archeological experts described failure to contain the fire that devoured large parts of the Scientific Complex in downtown Cairo and to rescue the priceless maps, manuscripts, and books kept inside as a disaster and warned that the possibility of similar acts of sabotage would make foreign intervention very likely.
Haggag Ibrahim, deputy chairman of the Association for the Preservation of Heritage and member of the Higher Commission for Museums, labeled those involved in setting the Scientific Complex on fire “the new Tatars” who want to erase all aspects of culture in the country.
“Those are the grandchildren of the Tatars who burned the library of Baghdad when they invaded the Muslim world,” he told Al Arabiya.
According to Ibrahim, UNESCO is now capable of placing historic sites in Egypt under international protection since Egyptians proved unable to do so themselves.
“Some countries like France might take this initiative.”
wait until the statues start blowing up…just like Afghanistan under the taliban…and Egypt’s got a LOT more statues, all non-Islamic.
From the possibly apocryphal legendary account of the final destruction of the library at Alexandria:
“The Moslems invaded Egypt during the seventh century… when a Christian called John informed the local Arab general that there existed in Alexandria a great Library preserving all the knowledge in the world he was perturbed. Eventually he sent word to Mecca where Caliph Omar ordered that all the books in the library should be destroyed because, as he said “they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.” Therefore, the books and scrolls were taken out of the library and distributed as fuel to the many bathhouses of the city. So enormous was the volume of literature that it took six months for it all to be burnt to ashes heating the saunas of the conquerors.”
The hope that springs eternal, springs right up their behind.
The wanton destruction of national historic sites tells us this violence hasn’t a nationalistic fervor to it. Maybe factional violence is part of the culture? In any case, democracy as an end goal seems to be a nebulous construct of the western media.
Remember the Buddha statues in Afghanistan?
i tremble for the Sphinx…
Yeah, sure, place it under the protection of the UN. Or France! That’ll do it.
Raise your right hand if you like the French … raise both hands if you are French.
Now that “smart people” are running the world, let’s see:
** chaos spreading through the Arab world
** hunger spreading through the third world
** show trials spreading through the (formerly) western world
** homage to Gaia the non-responsive goddess
** Happy Xmas
The Muslims are trying to rewrite history again?
A friend who was a monk from Egypt, and a dentist, spoke with me about the books which were burned at Alexandria.
He said that if those books would have been preserved, he believes that our medical knowledge would be at least 1000 years advanced from where it is today.
Progress is not the strong suit of the “religion of peace”, regressive and uninspired is more the face of that demonically inspired religion!
It does not bring freedom, but shackles and bondage.
It’s PRIMATE property and none of our business. We don’t need another middle east war.
Obomba won’t attack Egypt when they are so close to forming yet another islamic state. That would be bombing his own.
Nightmares…
…if this stuff bugs you.
Isn’t it obvious that those map-burning Joooos did this?
/islamo-mainstream
No wonder the British took Egyptian artifacts.
I’ve heard that had it not been for the lure of tourism dollars, NOTHING in Egypt would have been protected and maintained.
If the Egyptians are willing to kill the historical Copt community, what difference will a few scrolls make?
Meanwhile, here in our neck of the woods, we have the Occupiers (and others), all filled up with their own utopian ideology of ‘love and respect’ – destroying major downtown parks (the St. James park in Toronto), stopping regular people (the 99%) from working by their sit-ins and blockades of ports – and, after losing/winning sports games, going on looting riots.
Anyone who thinks that there is such a thing as some kind of direct linear transition from tribalism to democracy – is an ignoramus. There is no such path; the two political systems are, structurally, ‘two different beasts’ and there’s no natural evolution. The one structure has to be destroyed before the other one develops. And it develops; it doesn’t suddenly exist, with its constitution, all its institutions, all its legal aspects, all its traditions – overnight.
The constant between the two – is people. People can develop both modes, tribal and civic. Each is right in a certain population size and economy. When the population and economy require a civic mode, which is the mode that enables a middle class private economy – it will develop. As Havel said, there’s no holding it back; the people are the basis of development…[and he wanted to be a president who would ‘speak less and work more’. Rather the opposite of the One.].
Osumashi – yes. And for all the whining one hears, what serious person isn’t thrilled that Lord Elgin rescued those marbles from Greece?
My fear is that the worst of the fanatics will decide to dynamite the Sphynx, the pyramids, the museums – everything. Everything pre-Islamic is of the devil to these fanatics, especially if it’s pagan, as ancient Egyptian culture of course was.
The urge of a nation to protect its own magnificent pre-Islamic culture, if it has one, should not be overestimated. Not with this Islamic lunacy. In the aftermath of the revolution the Ayatollahs came very close to destroying the ruins of Persepolis.
As for tourism – yeah, I’m sure lots of old ladies will want to go play innocents abroad with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge: Link
A fore shadow of Europe’s cultural master pieces under an Islamic Caliphate in Europe.
From Cathedrals turned into Mosques to whole libraries burnt. To any art being destined for the fire in allahs name.
Remember as well that the Iranians are not only aware that they are Persian, and therefore the inheritors of an infinitely superior civilization to that of the desert bedouin who conquered them; that they not only think of themselves as racially distinct from, and superior to, the Arabs (most Muslims don’t; Mecca is the Islamic Mecca); they are also Shia. The Egyptians are Sunni. That means they are susceptible to the Wahabis.
I am not optimistic here.
black mamba – yes, that’s a key point, that hierarchical snobbery of the Persians vs the Arabs. Iran is the most dangerous ‘causal agency’ in that region – for that elitism, and for its imperialist agenda over the arab peoples.
But don’t underestimate the Egyptian pride in their own nation.
And, don’t ignore that Saudi Arabia and Iraq don’t want to be colonies of Iran.
The ME is a chaotic mess, as it tries to move out of a corrupted, dysfunctional tribal infrastructure – corrupted because it had moved into totalitarian dictatorship of one tribe – a genuine tribal mode couldn’t do that…and into a civic mode of governance (constitutional democracy).
And, it’s not only the political infrastructure that has to change; it’s the economic, for it has to move out of statism, relying on ONE state resource (oil, tolls) and into a private sector middle class economy.
And – to top all that, it has to do this within a population whose rural members are illiterate, superstitious and ignorant of the world – and its urban members are literate, electronically connected to the world – and enraged because their economic means are inadequate to enable them to participate in this new world.
Plus, they don’t have the luxury of time. The West moved from a tribal (feudal) mode into a civic mode from the 13th c..and it took them 400 years to do it. The ME doesn’t have the luxury of this amount of time; its populations are too massive, its economic needs are thus beyond any tribal economic capacity – and its people too aware of modern economies.
So- it’s a massive mess. But, it will sort itself out. But not without friction and calamities.
The Egyptian gov’t wanted to recreate the ancient Library in Alexandria, and in fact has set up a library and research centre there.
Well, our own yahoos, aka OWS, are of the same kidney as the IslamoFascists.
Kill them all.
Dave, did you mention the French
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UbqZ_oN5do
I think the islamofascists should be told bluntly: touch the Sphinx, or any significant Egyptian artifacts, and we nuke mecca. It might be instructive to lob a neutron bomb on mecca first which should make the death cult very happy as it would only kill people.
Knew I should have visited Egypt 30 years ago.
Exactly, Loki. I typically avoid third world countries to spare myself the horror of crippled and diseased people and animals. Suspect tourism will be subdued and suppressed for some time to come. And yes, the Greek tour guides in Athens were particularly vitriolic towards the British who “stole” their heritage. Thank goodness for that.
I believe it was French Artillerymen who shot the nose off of the Sphinx..