13 ms·

Why Palmyra's ruins are so important

70 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

mojo85 11y ago
Most of the ruins were looted by the Assad regime and its supporters. Leaving the area to be seized by ISIS on purpose.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
anti-shill 11y ago
it's almost like the media wants ISIS to destroy palmyra
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
Reading this makes me sick to my stomach.
- dbpokorny 11y ago
  If you're going to succumb to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate then at least own up to it instead of participating without awareness.
ddp 11y ago
Yeah, fine. If we had any decency, we'd deploy the Marines to protect the ruins, sort of like we deployed the Coast Guard to protect BP's interests in the Gulf. Not.
- puddlejumper 11y ago
  I checked out your profile and it is apparent you are a smart guy. However, as a former Marine Science Technician in the USCG, your comment is not only insulting, but has no basis in reality. Marine Environmental Response actions are incredibly difficult, complex, and dangerous. I would recommend reading the Deepwater Horizon ISPR to get a sense of how challenging this incident was, what was learned, and maybe get a perspective of how serious this kind of mission is to the men and women of the Coast Guard.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I think you took the comment the wrong way. It wasn't to denigrate the Coast Guard, but to say we'll clean up BP's mess because we're a corporatocracy, but not send the Marines in to save something of historical value. It was a knock at what the US government puts value on.
    - puddlejumper 11y ago
      Perhaps, but MER missions have zero to do with protecting corporate interests. They have everything to do with minimizing impact to the environment, the marine and coastal ecosystem, and our fisheries. The Coast Guard is also tasked with protecting the Maritime Economic Defense Zone, so I guess you could argue that there is a financial motivation to protect our nation's interests, but I don't like the implication that the CG is a corporate shill. I lived in that world and I understand the mission and the people. Maybe I'm just too sensitive...
      - ddp 11y ago
        At some level we're probably just going to disagree. There is ample video of various agencies of the federal government along with local and state law enforcement being used to prevent news organizations from filming the environmental impact across the gulf coast, and the Coast Guard was one of these. I also believe that injecting nearly two million gallons of Corexit was done without regard for the impact on marine life; it was done to ensure that the oil would settle on the bottom of the gulf. So less spoiled beaches was obviously good, but the impact on marine life and ecosystem made the spill much much worse. Read the Wiki page on Corexit (FWIW, I have a degree in chemistry from UNC-CH). And since you mentioned the Marine Economic Defense Zone (otherwise known as the Exclusive Economic Zone), this is presumably what entitled a Coast Guard cutter to board my sailboat about 3 NM off the coast of Bimini in international waters? You all forced me to reduce speed to 3 knots and spent two hours searching my boat. So long in fact that you made me arrive in Miami after dark. You all kept telling me that it was a safety search (flares, life jackets, etc.), but we all know you were looking for illegal immigrants, drugs, and guns. And you found none. But you did endanger myself and my girlfriend. And for the record, my girlfriend attended the Coast Guard Academy in 1984. I'm glad you were or are in the Coast Guard. I know you would have done your best to rescue me if I'd triggered my EPIRB. We're not debating that. But I do believe that the US military was essentially deployed to protect BP's image in the Gulf although there's an idiom that goes something like, 'never ascribe to malice that which can otherwise be ascribed to stupidity'. So maybe all that just happened because of the same incompetence that gave us Michael Brown as FEMA director for Katrina. It's not like I claim we have a functional federal government.
fapjacks 11y ago
I have been considering going back to help the Kurds fight ISIS for some time now. I want to say stories like this highlight the urgency of the situation, but in the face of all the murder happening in areas controlled by the dark army of Mordor, it would make me appear to have the wrong priorities. ISIS needs to be destroyed.
- seivan 11y ago
  My father have friends working in the IDP camps. There are plenty of Kurdish doctors from Sweden going there, doing abortions on 9 year olds. Some don't survive. The thing ISIS did to the Yezidis.. the children, the female ones. It would kill your insides and want to set the world on fire. In fact, it wasn't just ISIS, but their Sunni muslim neighbours. As soon as they heard ISIS were nearby, they started killing their Yezidi neighbours, raping their daughters on the streets. There were mattresses and used condoms lying on the streets when the HPG (Yezidi militia) came back to Sinjar... grim scenes. It wasn't 3 or 4, but systematic abuse on thousands. Christians (Assyrians) weren't spared either, but not as many as 7000 Yezidis females captive since last summer. The male children are being used as human shields and sucide bombers. The female (down to the age of 6) are being sold on sex-slave markets. Edit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22/islamic-state-burned-a-woman-alive-for-not-engaging-in-an-extreme-sex-act-u-n-official-says/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22... "They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes." Set the world on fire.
  - ISL 11y ago
    Don't set the world on fire. Be a bastion for good in the world.
    - waps 11y ago
      This story is remniscent of the 1948 Israel war of independance which was also full of stories about neighbours suddenly being given the change to rape, steal and pillage. One can only hope it ends in exactly the same way : 5 more Israels in the middle east. A Yezidi one. An Assyrian one. A Shi'a one. You can say whatever you want to say but this islam is an ideology which is centrally focused on it's supposed superiority and the focus is the reason for this superiority : that allah will guarantee military victory. Walk near any large station in a large Western European city and you can find out for yourself (if you look the least bit dark you will find out even if you don't want to, they'll walk up to you and ask). Paris - Gare du Nord, Brussels North, Amsterdam, ... you should go to Syria and fight and kill. Feign minimal intrest and you get to find out more. Why - because allah will make you win and we'll finally punish the infidels, and everybody you hate. They'll provide a wife, and openly talk about their "attitude" to captured women - what allah "allows". The main counterargument you hear on that street - it's not a way to victory, it's a way to death. I don't know about if this is similar in America. Does anyone have similar experiences in, say, New York ? Given where the recruitment happens in Western Europe and how successful it is in these western states, I find it extremely difficult to believe that this ISIS will remain confined to the middle east. I am terrified what will happen in Western Europe in the large cities if ISIS appears to become more successful. This ideology needs to die, if we are to have peace.
cV6WB 11y ago
I visited Palmyra in 2009 - it is truly an amazing place. Politics aside this would be a devastating cultural loss for all of humanity.
turar 11y ago
There was an interview with a person from Palmyra. He was pretty bitter and said the world only cares about the ruins. Not much mention of people currently living in Palmyra in the media, it's all about the ruins.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- aikah 11y ago
  Like it was all about the Buddha statues in Afghanistan... the people living in these areas and victims of the barbarians have "no face" and "no voice", and are not considered as worth as a few monuments protected by the UNESCO. That's the sad reality we're living in.
- zantana 11y ago
  This can be a double-edged sword. Cambodia to most of the world is the amalgamation of the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat. Unfortunately the Cambodians don't make any money directly off of Ankor Wat, but the tourism and interest it brings their country will probably help them more in the long run, even if they are only viewed as a window on the past.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
Historical ruins is our shared heritage and our countries should take blame for everything that lead to this situation, should they take harm. And I mean [almost] every country. By playing petty and pointless political games we're about to lose things we have no hopes to ever have back. Will people learn? These days I think the only way for humanity to save face is to die off entirely.
- jqm 11y ago
  First paragraph is gold. Every country responsible involved in the proxy wars and game playing that has resulted in threats to these ruins is behaving in a criminally careless fashion and should be brought to account for their misdeed. The second paragraph is also gold until the last sentence which is absolute shit. Humanity dying off is much much worse than ancient ruins being destroyed. Ancient ruins don't mean anything if there aren't any people around to experience them.
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    I invite you to tell that to the people who gave their lives trying to save archives, artifacts and records when the National Library in Sarajevo was shelled in 1992. I guess some people think these things are worth dying for.
- chongli 11y ago
  When a person dies we also lose something we'll never get back. And the person who dies? They lose the entire universe and all of its future possibilities.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Blame games don't solve problems. Misanthropy and careless childish avocation of destruction rather than constructive aims is the macro issue here. Maybe we can learn from history and rather than brutishly lash out in anger or fear we could attempt to build new bridges least we forget why the old bridges failed.
  - 11y ago
dankohn1 11y ago
My wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Palmyra in 2010, and it was an extraordinary experience. Not only are they some of the most spectacular ruins in the world, but while we toured, there was almost no one else there. It's just crazy to take in vistas like [0] and feel like we're the ones there to appreciate it. Nevertheless, the potential damage is insignificant compared to the human losses under both Assad's regime and ISIS. [0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc7jofyfhb36ozb/palmyra.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc7jofyfhb36ozb/palmyra.jpg?dl=0
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
comrade1 11y ago
Iraq is majority Shia. Iran is majority Shia. Isis is Sunni. Saddam was Sunni, a minority in Iraq, but saddam kept the Sunni in power. When he was deposed the Sunni were repressed and pushed into a repressed role. However they... Fuck it. It would take a week of Ivy League lectures to explain what's going on. My point is that we fucked things up by getting rid of saddam and not putting a powerful repressive regime in place. But, also, the people of the region want to live under Isis and if we're not willing to utterly destroy them (which I don't think we are) then we should just let the people of the region take care of it.
foxhedgehog 11y ago
As somebody who used to work on Middle Eastern affairs for the U.S. government (and, full disclosure, a CSIS alum), I thought that this was a pretty solid op ed: http://csis.org/publication/defeat-ramadi-time-transparency-integrity-and-change http://csis.org/publication/defeat-ramadi-time-transparency-...

70 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

mojo85 11y ago

Most of the ruins were looted by the Assad regime and its supporters. Leaving the area to be seized by ISIS on purpose.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

anti-shill 11y ago

it's almost like the media wants ISIS to destroy palmyra

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

Reading this makes me sick to my stomach.

dbpokorny 11y ago
If you're going to succumb to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate then at least own up to it instead of participating without awareness.

ddp 11y ago

Yeah, fine. If we had any decency, we'd deploy the Marines to protect the ruins, sort of like we deployed the Coast Guard to protect BP's interests in the Gulf. Not.

puddlejumper 11y ago
I checked out your profile and it is apparent you are a smart guy. However, as a former Marine Science Technician in the USCG, your comment is not only insulting, but has no basis in reality. Marine Environmental Response actions are incredibly difficult, complex, and dangerous. I would recommend reading the Deepwater Horizon ISPR to get a sense of how challenging this incident was, what was learned, and maybe get a perspective of how serious this kind of mission is to the men and women of the Coast Guard.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I think you took the comment the wrong way. It wasn't to denigrate the Coast Guard, but to say we'll clean up BP's mess because we're a corporatocracy, but not send the Marines in to save something of historical value. It was a knock at what the US government puts value on.
  - puddlejumper 11y ago
    Perhaps, but MER missions have zero to do with protecting corporate interests. They have everything to do with minimizing impact to the environment, the marine and coastal ecosystem, and our fisheries. The Coast Guard is also tasked with protecting the Maritime Economic Defense Zone, so I guess you could argue that there is a financial motivation to protect our nation's interests, but I don't like the implication that the CG is a corporate shill. I lived in that world and I understand the mission and the people. Maybe I'm just too sensitive...
    - ddp 11y ago
      At some level we're probably just going to disagree. There is ample video of various agencies of the federal government along with local and state law enforcement being used to prevent news organizations from filming the environmental impact across the gulf coast, and the Coast Guard was one of these. I also believe that injecting nearly two million gallons of Corexit was done without regard for the impact on marine life; it was done to ensure that the oil would settle on the bottom of the gulf. So less spoiled beaches was obviously good, but the impact on marine life and ecosystem made the spill much much worse. Read the Wiki page on Corexit (FWIW, I have a degree in chemistry from UNC-CH). And since you mentioned the Marine Economic Defense Zone (otherwise known as the Exclusive Economic Zone), this is presumably what entitled a Coast Guard cutter to board my sailboat about 3 NM off the coast of Bimini in international waters? You all forced me to reduce speed to 3 knots and spent two hours searching my boat. So long in fact that you made me arrive in Miami after dark. You all kept telling me that it was a safety search (flares, life jackets, etc.), but we all know you were looking for illegal immigrants, drugs, and guns. And you found none. But you did endanger myself and my girlfriend. And for the record, my girlfriend attended the Coast Guard Academy in 1984. I'm glad you were or are in the Coast Guard. I know you would have done your best to rescue me if I'd triggered my EPIRB. We're not debating that. But I do believe that the US military was essentially deployed to protect BP's image in the Gulf although there's an idiom that goes something like, 'never ascribe to malice that which can otherwise be ascribed to stupidity'. So maybe all that just happened because of the same incompetence that gave us Michael Brown as FEMA director for Katrina. It's not like I claim we have a functional federal government.

fapjacks 11y ago

I have been considering going back to help the Kurds fight ISIS for some time now. I want to say stories like this highlight the urgency of the situation, but in the face of all the murder happening in areas controlled by the dark army of Mordor, it would make me appear to have the wrong priorities. ISIS needs to be destroyed.

seivan 11y ago
My father have friends working in the IDP camps. There are plenty of Kurdish doctors from Sweden going there, doing abortions on 9 year olds. Some don't survive. The thing ISIS did to the Yezidis.. the children, the female ones. It would kill your insides and want to set the world on fire. In fact, it wasn't just ISIS, but their Sunni muslim neighbours. As soon as they heard ISIS were nearby, they started killing their Yezidi neighbours, raping their daughters on the streets. There were mattresses and used condoms lying on the streets when the HPG (Yezidi militia) came back to Sinjar... grim scenes. It wasn't 3 or 4, but systematic abuse on thousands. Christians (Assyrians) weren't spared either, but not as many as 7000 Yezidis females captive since last summer. The male children are being used as human shields and sucide bombers. The female (down to the age of 6) are being sold on sex-slave markets. Edit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22/islamic-state-burned-a-woman-alive-for-not-engaging-in-an-extreme-sex-act-u-n-official-says/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22... "They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes." Set the world on fire.
- ISL 11y ago
  Don't set the world on fire. Be a bastion for good in the world.
  - waps 11y ago
    This story is remniscent of the 1948 Israel war of independance which was also full of stories about neighbours suddenly being given the change to rape, steal and pillage. One can only hope it ends in exactly the same way : 5 more Israels in the middle east. A Yezidi one. An Assyrian one. A Shi'a one. You can say whatever you want to say but this islam is an ideology which is centrally focused on it's supposed superiority and the focus is the reason for this superiority : that allah will guarantee military victory. Walk near any large station in a large Western European city and you can find out for yourself (if you look the least bit dark you will find out even if you don't want to, they'll walk up to you and ask). Paris - Gare du Nord, Brussels North, Amsterdam, ... you should go to Syria and fight and kill. Feign minimal intrest and you get to find out more. Why - because allah will make you win and we'll finally punish the infidels, and everybody you hate. They'll provide a wife, and openly talk about their "attitude" to captured women - what allah "allows". The main counterargument you hear on that street - it's not a way to victory, it's a way to death. I don't know about if this is similar in America. Does anyone have similar experiences in, say, New York ? Given where the recruitment happens in Western Europe and how successful it is in these western states, I find it extremely difficult to believe that this ISIS will remain confined to the middle east. I am terrified what will happen in Western Europe in the large cities if ISIS appears to become more successful. This ideology needs to die, if we are to have peace.

cV6WB 11y ago

I visited Palmyra in 2009 - it is truly an amazing place. Politics aside this would be a devastating cultural loss for all of humanity.

turar 11y ago

There was an interview with a person from Palmyra. He was pretty bitter and said the world only cares about the ruins. Not much mention of people currently living in Palmyra in the media, it's all about the ruins.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aikah 11y ago
Like it was all about the Buddha statues in Afghanistan... the people living in these areas and victims of the barbarians have "no face" and "no voice", and are not considered as worth as a few monuments protected by the UNESCO. That's the sad reality we're living in.
zantana 11y ago
This can be a double-edged sword. Cambodia to most of the world is the amalgamation of the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat. Unfortunately the Cambodians don't make any money directly off of Ankor Wat, but the tourism and interest it brings their country will probably help them more in the long run, even if they are only viewed as a window on the past.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

Historical ruins is our shared heritage and our countries should take blame for everything that lead to this situation, should they take harm. And I mean [almost] every country. By playing petty and pointless political games we're about to lose things we have no hopes to ever have back. Will people learn? These days I think the only way for humanity to save face is to die off entirely.

jqm 11y ago
First paragraph is gold. Every country responsible involved in the proxy wars and game playing that has resulted in threats to these ruins is behaving in a criminally careless fashion and should be brought to account for their misdeed. The second paragraph is also gold until the last sentence which is absolute shit. Humanity dying off is much much worse than ancient ruins being destroyed. Ancient ruins don't mean anything if there aren't any people around to experience them.
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  I invite you to tell that to the people who gave their lives trying to save archives, artifacts and records when the National Library in Sarajevo was shelled in 1992. I guess some people think these things are worth dying for.
chongli 11y ago
When a person dies we also lose something we'll never get back. And the person who dies? They lose the entire universe and all of its future possibilities.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Blame games don't solve problems. Misanthropy and careless childish avocation of destruction rather than constructive aims is the macro issue here. Maybe we can learn from history and rather than brutishly lash out in anger or fear we could attempt to build new bridges least we forget why the old bridges failed.
- 11y ago

dankohn1 11y ago

My wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Palmyra in 2010, and it was an extraordinary experience. Not only are they some of the most spectacular ruins in the world, but while we toured, there was almost no one else there. It's just crazy to take in vistas like [0] and feel like we're the ones there to appreciate it. Nevertheless, the potential damage is insignificant compared to the human losses under both Assad's regime and ISIS. [0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc7jofyfhb36ozb/palmyra.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc7jofyfhb36ozb/palmyra.jpg?dl=0

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

comrade1 11y ago

Iraq is majority Shia. Iran is majority Shia. Isis is Sunni. Saddam was Sunni, a minority in Iraq, but saddam kept the Sunni in power. When he was deposed the Sunni were repressed and pushed into a repressed role. However they... Fuck it. It would take a week of Ivy League lectures to explain what's going on. My point is that we fucked things up by getting rid of saddam and not putting a powerful repressive regime in place. But, also, the people of the region want to live under Isis and if we're not willing to utterly destroy them (which I don't think we are) then we should just let the people of the region take care of it.

foxhedgehog 11y ago

As somebody who used to work on Middle Eastern affairs for the U.S. government (and, full disclosure, a CSIS alum), I thought that this was a pretty solid op ed: http://csis.org/publication/defeat-ramadi-time-transparency-integrity-and-change http://csis.org/publication/defeat-ramadi-time-transparency-...