UN vandals spray graffiti on Sahara's prehistoric art

The news article is from 2008 and it is discussing vandalism that occurred as far back as 2006. All military break down the social conditioning of their troops and recondition them to obey, to kill and destroy This will continue as long as people ALLOW it to happen. They did not desecrate these sites out of ignorance, they did it out of spite. They knew about the caves or they would not have found them. They knew the significance of them and came prepared to deface them. You don't carry spray paint in the Sahara without a purpose.

Originally posted by crazydaisy
If one feels the need to leave their art on a rock, stone, building, etc.

So you think its okay to deface someone's property with this 'art"? Like rocks or cliffs in a public park paid for by taxes?

Or spraying those gang tattoos on my brick wall surrounding my pool? (which costs me and the county both time and money to clean up and repaint several times a year) or should I just leave this 'art' so these clowns can mark my turf as theirs?

Or on buildings just because there is a big surface?

Maybe they should try it on their own homes

About idiots and idiotic behavior, you'll find them everywhere. One cannot fingerpoint a large group of people (like Russians, Croatians or Egyptians) and mark them as "poor soldiers" or plain idiots - another can do the same for some other group and we'll never hear the end of it!

About respecting ancient legacies, education aside, one needs to have the ancient legacy in their own "national gene pool" to respect that of others. With that in mind, I highly doubt that "better" troops, like US troops, would be much more respectful. They weren't much so in Iraq...

And to think that those morons could leave their marks NEXT to the ancient markings and not ruin them.

reply to post by Maegnas


I definitely do not think US troops would respect these sites. I do not think it is just the ignorance of a few soldiers, it's the ignorance of the masses.
Just as the war is ignorance, so is the vandalism. Your correct, it isn't just a few soldiers here and there. They are everywhere and not only are they vandalizing these sacred elements of human history, some are even selling pieces of it.

reply to post by zorgon


I agree if you are going to graffiti something, do it on your own space. Worse than tagging over someone's art is vandalizing 15,000 year old caves. Those are just the ones spoken of in this article. We have found sites dating to 30,000 BC that have been destroyed. Upper Paleolithic cave paintings are the earliest histories of art. It is when man developed the skills to crush materials and mix pigments with elements. We have even found carved out bones that they then spat the paint through. These sites are the history of art evolution, but more importantly, how man evolved in toolmaking, creativity, pictorial representations, and story telling through them. The defacement of them is sacrilegious in the sense that they are being covered up and tools are being lost.

Originally posted by Socio
I definitely do not think US troops would respect these sites.

Aww come on, they just having fun...

Zigurrat at Ur



But seriously War tends to bring out the 'best' in humanity

"Stuff Happens!" - Rumsfeld on looting after fall of Baghdad



But is not only US Soldiers... The treasure hunters are even worse


Heritage Lost
Looting of archaeological sites continues in Iraq


Credit: John Russell
Looters waving from Isin. the archaeological site

“On May 20 2005, President Bush renewed Executive Order 13350, declaring that a state of emergency exists with respect to Iraq. This means that the prohibition on the import into the United States of cultural materials illegally removed from Iraq after August 1990 will continue (in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1483).” - Patty Gerstenblith; Professor, DePaul University College of Law

Have a look at the damage to major sites by Iraqui looters
www.savingantiquities.org...

But we do have a crack team working on recovery

JIACG - Joint Interagency Coordination Group

Blowing the safe ripped the hinges from the doors. This is the operations room of the Joint Interagency Coordination Group, JIACG for short. This is part of a team of 80 now deployed across the region and drawn from agencies with expertise in counterterrorism, weapons of mass destruction and sanctions busting. 25 are drawn from the US Department of Defense, military intelligence and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons experts. But 55 out of the 80 are non-military, undercover customs investigators and the CIA. 'News Night' understands that British intelligence officers from MI6 are part of the team. We agreed to disguise the identity of some operatives while filming this report. The JIACG intelligence team has never been filmed before.

www.abc.net.au...


Photo: DoD photo by Helene C. Stikkel

Captioned:
"During a Pentagon briefing, Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos said so far during a four-month investigation, about 3,400 artifacts have been recovered and returned to the Iraqi people, but many items remain missing. He leads a 13-member team formed by U.S. Central Command to recover items missing or stolen from Iraqi museums."

It gets worse...

How about Ancient gold artifacts molten into gold bars?






THE SECRET OF NIMRUD
JIACG Recovers Treasures of Nimrud

Photographs by Noreen Feeney
Edited by John Simmons
Iraq Museum International



Fortunately many items were recovered intact, like Nimrud's Crown



Images courtesy of the Baghdad Museum
www.baghdadmuseum.org...

reply to post by zorgon


Another thread I recently made, on the topic of ancient cities being ripped down and sold piece by piece


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sorry new here I am not sure how to insert the link

most of soldiers from every country do not know anything about history,
valuable culture artifacts, science...

they are professionals in their own business and that is kill and not be killed.

so to even expect they know that wall paintings where they have signed are older than they can imagine; or to know that golden ancient artifacts are more than piece of gold; is unrealistic.

so when they find themselves in these situations they tend to do something stupid.

do you believe that petarcroarmy really knows what he did? he is croatian redneck, excellent fighter but i bet he didn't have A+ in history

or US soldiers holding Nimrud crown (or whatever name is) really see something other than golden bar?
i don't think so....

IMO if you want these things preserved as they should be - you would have to send a lot of scientists and historians with soldiers to keep an eye on them - pigs would fly then, wouldn't they?

reply to post by Dinamo


That is just plain ignorance. I do not claim to be able to carbon date art but if I came across a painting that looked that old, I think I could use logical deductive thinking. To say that they are innocent based on their knowledge of the material seems somewhat irrelevant. I teach my toddler not to touch other peoples stuff but these aren't children, they are grown adults and whether they realize they are artifacts is bypassing the point.

These are not mindless soldiers and they have an agenda. Otherwise systematic vandalism wouldn't be occurring.

Originally posted by Dinamo
these people are retarded morons, but calling croatian infantry and special forces "poor" along with russian ones shows your level of knowledge in war!

stick to the ps3 rather

Wow, it seems no matter who you criticise there will be a fanboy to pop up in any thread.

I don't believe I called Croat or Russian troops poor either. If you actually read what I said, I clearly said was "some ill disciplined" troops, which you can find in any army the world over no matter where they are from.

Then I went on to say, "sometimes" the UN get poor quality troops.

You connected the two and made an assumption, which to be honest was a bad one and displays poor reading comprehension. For the most part, the troops volunteered to the UN for peacekeeping are from poor quality militaries, such as Bangladesh and Egypt, precisely because the troops from NATO et al are otherwise engaged.

At the end of the day though, when it comes to discipline and training, I'd pit a British squaddie against any Russian, Croat or for that matter almost any soldier anywhere.

Oh, for the record, I don't own a PS3. Wind your neck in, sunshine.