I write this in my fedex truck on break. I once was entrusted with a Yap stone, an artifact from polynesia that I was told is sort of like currency and a famliy/land record. It was about 80lbs by itself, and was in a heavy wooden crate. I got to take a look at it before it was sealed up. I'd like to say I took pretty good care of it while it was in my possession. The family who shipped it was polynesian, and it was their own stone but they were sending it to a museum, I forget where. So yeah, lots of fun things show up occasionally.
The difference between a professional British looter and an amateur was the professional got rich and the amateur got bankrupt. There were definitely both kinds participating.
i was surprised to hear you say this wasn't your usual sort of content at the end! i'm an independent assyriologist and as a first time viewer thought this was incredibly well-structured and well-researched. i can't believe you've not gotten more views, but i'm glad youtube dropped this on me and will definitely be watching more
Weird...I just thought to myself the other day after watching a different video, "I wonder if there's other "-ologies" like there is Egyptology." I was too busy to look it up then and the thought faded. Now I know there is!
I can't stop imagining these priceless ancient artifacts literally sent to a hobby lobby store to be carefully unpacked and guarded by khaki clad employees.
Hobby lobby did not buy to the artifacts to resale . Not one piece that hobby lobby have in its possession was bought from the citizens. You are a dreamer that you don’t think that a Muslim would sell or destroy pieces that Muhammad was associated with. Hobby lobby did not set up the sales of the artifacts. You are a dreamer and not want the controlling faction to sell. Like an archeologist can some how have an input on where any artifacts stay. We see hundreds of antiquities traveling around the world in shows constantly, and few of the shows are actually owned by the government where the pieces where discovered. It feels more like you have a connection here. Obama’s government’s was committed to coming hard at Hobby Lobby . Mr. Greene refused to provide the death pill for abortions to his employees and Obama was trying to force that down the throat of all. So Hobby Lobby and the Catholic nuns fought him all the way to the supreme court and won. That pissed the government off tremendously. They wanted companies and churches to pay to kill babies up until that Babies was delivered. Is this the reason for your attack? You hated Hobby Lobby for refusing to participate in such a sick act. Against what they believe in.
Considering the US based interim government (the CPA) managed to "lose" 8 billion dollars intended for reconstruction of the country, 1.7bn of which being found in cash, in a bunker in Lebanon, the answer is either "never again" or "go digging in Lebanon"
@@flyingfoamtv2169you fell for Nazi propaganda. They increased funding for Archaeology a little bit for some time only and even then they forced archaeologists to go on stupid quests of finding Atlantis, relics of the gods or the damn holy grail. They didn't let them do what they thought was important and good, cuz it's the Nazis dude.
@@flyingfoamtv2169Nah more like relationships of intellectuals with governments in general. Saddam didn't have plans like Generalplan Ost and is more like a power tripping dictator anyway which was supported by the US before the Kuwaiti debacle.
Daesh داعش is also an acronym meaning الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام, exactly the same as english. they hate it because acronyms are mostly reserved for unimportant stuff in Arabic.
I would say I'm shocked that you were able to pull so much depth and insight and complexity from this story, but I'm not because I've seen you do it before and thats what makes this channel something special. In a small but real way I will think about the world differently from now on. Hopefully this one catches the algorithm sometime or another, definitely would be deserved, and something more people should hear!
In a world where the pure academic search for truth isn't accorded the respect and protection it axiomatically deserves; in that world, civilization is a joke .
I didn't know objects could be named in court cases. USA vs Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets; and Approximately Three Thousand (3,000) Ancient Clay Bullae makes us seem really petty and bad at counting without context. Subbed and liked lfg
Lol to funny but I'm american and I found that last artifact they said Arab imagrant haha so funny to me doj it was stolen from the county join one of my stays and mfs keep it then I see it on tv
About the conclusion I also think it makes sense to note that this is usually the standard we apply to trade goods. "innocent until proven guilty" is only the case for people but for trade goods of all kinds it's usually "suspect until proven trustworthy", food agencies don't just assume that food is safe until an accident happens, they require the producers to prove that it is safe and regularly inspect facilities to make sure that this is the case. Consumer products usually also have to undergo some form of testing, depending on their application, before they can be approved. It obviously should be the case for antiquities as well, that providence needs to be proven rigorously going all the way back to the source otherwise they should be treated as illegal, though frankly I just think there should be a blanket ban on their sale and the sale of paleontological fossils just like how the EU just has a blanket ban on the trade and sale of wild animals. I don't think there's any scenario where it's justifiable for a private collector to own these things, firstly because it limits scientific access to them, secondly because they can't possibly claim ownership over them when they didn't commission their production, and thirdly because obviously they are the common heritage of all mankind.
the problem with this is that private ownership of this stuff is the basis and driving force behind much of our modern collection of these things. entire museums are built on the donated bragging rights collections of rich old dudes. whether we like it or not people collect these things for self aggrandizement and glory as much if not more so than scientific advancement or philanthropy. also there's very much a grey area. is my collecting of 100-year-old beer cans illegal now? when does trash become archeology? who would be in charge of deciding that? etc
@@Dap1ssmonkthere is a vast difference between trash and ancient antiques, Especially because there are laws in place in the united states and in iraq which makes taking their antiques a crime, So I would assume that you could find a better definition of what they consider antiques in some piece of legislation or international treaty The UN probably has a good definition as well as part of the world heritage site program etc
24:15 Minor correction -- the organization you list as the Oriental Institute has recently rebranded as the "Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in West Asia & North Africa." you may consider listing them as such if you need to mention them in the future. Great video! :)
I took the list from a passage in the book, which was from 2009 so I wasn't sure if they were the same org, but good to know. Thanks for making note of it though.
My Byzantine studies professor worked on some early Christian archeological sites around the time that ISIS came onto the scene. He recalled to us that their location was kept SUPER secret, even the photos of the site would have their backgrounds edited out so that it couldnt be deduced from the environment. OpSec was so tight because ISIS elements had a record of locating active archeological sites through publications so they could be looted/destroyed
You keep me fascinated. You're one of the few creators out there pumping academic content with little commodification of content, while still retaining an 'image'. I truly appreciate how you combine different disciplines all with the same rigor of research of one another to create your story. You mentioned you'd leave many links to read in the description, alongside Badiou. When you have the time, please leave them, I'd love a deeper dive.
This is maybe the fifth time I've promised links and then forgotten to add them in. I think it's because I have a list of articles and the links I promise are in the middle of those, and my brain goes "wait remember TH-cam doesn't like links that lead "off platform" so I just... forget.
The Iraq invasion is characterized by such wide sweeping incompetence that the incompetence seems intentional very often. I mean the army itself on multiple occasions told Rumsfeld that the plans weren't realistic and would result in chaos and fail to create a democratic state. In their own plans the Iraqi oil fields were meant to stay nationalized and help pay for infrastructure. They also believed they needed at least 300.000 American soldiers to occupy the country but they only had 21k IIRC, which wasn't even enough to guard former Iraqi army magazines and bases, let alone prevent looting. The looted weapons were of course later used by insurgents to attack coalition soldiers, after said coalition had managed to anger basically everyone with heavy handed tactics such as door to door raids, major cuts to the public sector and even direct attacks on news agencies. The fact that the invasion even succeeded is nothing close to a miracle, at one point about 20.000 American Soldiers including and armored division was a hair breadths away from being cut off from supplies in the middle of enemy territory when supply convoys started being ambushed by Iraqi guerillas. This was only prevented by the deployment of the SAS in cities to protect the convoys but if not it might have been the biggest American military defeat since WWII.
You don't seem to get anything right. The initial invasion of Iraq was accomplished with 160000 troops. The invasion began on the 19th of May 2003 and the country was taken by the 1st of March. There were never plans to let Iraq's oil industry remain nationalized. The US oil industry spent record sums to get Bush and Cheney elected and planning for the war began around February 2001
@@basedgamerguy818 Isn't Iraq also being controlled by terrorist groups? We retreated leaving behind millions in military equipment. Where exactly did we succeed?
Im so glad you didnt do the emotionally visceral thing you could have done during the Iconoclasm section. I just sort of knee jerked and scrolled down as soon as I saw the word because I've *seen* the videos of what they did to Nimrud and it was incredibly devastating and makes me cry to think about.
This may be a nonsense thought, but my instinct here is that this represents the next step (or A next step) in the shifting of Imperialism from directly nation-state based to more indirect and corporatized (so, you know, corporate colonialism)
@tnttiger3079 Oh, I'm well aware that corporate Imperialism isn't a new concept! I was just discussing how that applied to this particular Hobby Lobby incident. I sucked at research in grad school, I refuse to claim new ideas!
That's what the World Economic Forum is for. Always trust your instincts... International corporations have neither the allegiance, nor the accountability to any particular nation. They are determining global policy without consent of the population and their plans are already well under way.
The looting of Cambodian artifacts is wild. Think the Met was fighting returning a few artifacts a couple years ago. I used to walk past an Egyptian obelisk in Central park pretty often. “Cleopatra’s needle.” Came from Alexandria. It was a gift from the Egyptian government in the 1800s, essentially a bribe to the US to stay away as France and Great Britain vied for hegemony within Egypt (Egypt became a British protectorate a decade after the gift was given). Even “legally” acquired artifacts can’t be unbound from colonial pillaging. ETA: I just found out the Met has actually announced it is finally returning those artifacts! Also wanted to recommend the NYT Op-Ed "Mighty Shiva Was Never Meant to Live in Manhattan" by Erin Thompson. In typical NYT fashion, the title the editors gave it is absolutely abysmal in my opinion (not only does the dated phrasing "Mighty Shiva" reek of Orientalism, "Shiva" never even comes up in the body of the article. No Hindu artifacts do!). What the article is actually about is the potential for museums to make repatriation into an opportunity, rather than a loss, to use technology to commemorate repatriation and celebrate and educate on the artifacts that were once there and have now been returned home.
Hi Rosencreutz! I don't know if you are going to see this comment because of the time after the upload of the video but i just wanna to say, as a political scientist with specialization in international relations and love for history and interest in working in the protection of ancient artifacts and sites, that your video hit me where i feel. In one hand, the use of the concept "Zoning" as places of influence whitout the "interference" of the State is something that i never heard in all my years of study and writing articles, for that reason thanks for teaching me something new. Also, the correlation with the looting, zoning and ISIS is great. And in the other hand, it breaks my heart hearing everything that happened with the sites, of course i care about the people but when I saw the destruction of Palmyra in live i started crying, seeing that kinda broke me in the moment, so much lost and for nothing. I didn't know about that Captain of USA that wanted to protect the Museum i wish to be like that but having the means to really be able to protect those sites and places.
Well done. I was a young SGT in 2003 and it was conducted by ideological civilians and officers with smart sounding names like "Neo-Conservative" but really they are just adult men that see the world like a John Wayne movie. Quick and easy narratives, with no promethean foresight or preparation, and a childish entitlement to getting the girl.
It sounds like the grey market might be more core to this video than you realized. What are "places where this happens" or Zones other than the grey market of humanitarianism? The idea that there can be a "place where this happens" is saying that you can commit crimes against humanity, it's just improper to do it in certain places. And opening up that possibility allows products of mass crime to enter the global market.
18:30 - And possibly a neoconservative tendency to take Western cultural characteristics for granted. Didn't even occur to them that the artifacts would be looted the instant the dictator was toppled, must have assumed the Iraqis would be as orderly as the Germans.
Wow. Great job! The title really caught my eye! I knew nothing about this until starting this video and couldn’t have been more excited to continue watching. Every time I had a question about the about something it was almost immediately addressed soon after and didn’t leave me guessing much at all! Thanks for such a cool entertaining video Mr Rosencreutz!
Hey dude, just found your channel from your recent Paradox video. I’ve watched some of your stuff now and I am very impressed, this is high quality stuff you are doing.
My favorite part of the video was the Zoning Of Iraq part, although I don't know much it holds up from a Marxist perspective. The modern nation state as a dictatorship of the Capitalist class is already in a state of anarchy. They will take as much as they can, as much as the proletariat will allow them to. A large "french" firm, is only french in the sense that a cruise ship is from Panama. It utilizes the French state's power in international courts, because it provides enough value to it that its not worth going elsewhere. And the french state allows the corporation to do this while providing nothing because they are one and the same, or at least, the line where a large firm and its host state is blurred. The State is puppeted by a million tiny strings. The "zoning" of Iraq emerges from imperialism, the people of Iraq had no agency to stop ISIS, as they were underdeveloped and deprived of capital by the Global North, each individual citizen of Iraq wasn't organized enough, their moral destroyed by war, and radicalized to ISIS's side, they lacked any agency to act and repel them. The theorizes withering away of the state likely wont happen as companies lack the legitimacy in regions where people are organized and wealthy enough to stop them (the Global North), although, may happen in the Global South.
What about having museums of fake artifacts? We would need a kinder word than the word "fake". The purpose would be to keep alive the skills and techniques and technologies of different cultures.
I mean either that'd be a replica or just a more modern artifact. If it's a tradition that still survives and a museum simply commissions one for its collection then it's still just as much an authentic artifact it's just newer. For the reasons you mentioned this would really be preferable, museums aren't just static buildings to display stuff they're also research institutions and meant to preserve cultural legacies so if possible it makes way more sense to just commission someone to make it. It also has the bonus that you can get the people who actually use the thing in question to provide commentary on it and even give demonstrations of how it is used, which the museum itself could use and just supplement with its own experts.
I am unsure where this whole video is going but, as someone who's partially in the palaeontological field, we HATE fossil smuggling, the black market and the exploitation and mistreatment of people from similarly exploited countries that are now poor due to it. Rare fossils should go to research institutions to be studied by science, not to be sold to private collectors. Plentifuls like shark teeth, various mollusc fossils, crustaceans, trilobite fossils and the like can and should be available to a public market but stuff that is important to science should remain accessible. The exact same stands for archaeological findings and they should also exist in their regions of origin and not be looted to be taken to goddamn London or something...sheesh. tl;dr - Myanmar amber is invaluable to science Myanmar amber is being excavated by a suffering and exploited workforce, then sold for high prices and smuggled
Not to defend "looting"; but this context of "things rightfully _belong_ to _Somewhere_ is intriguing. I would think the entire concept of "ownership" is purely an intellectual undertaking. That is to say, aside from the mental participant's reasoning, mother nature seems to care less where things _Go_ than where they _Become_ (materialized). The latter requires precision in formula and formation; the former doesn't even require intention or a sense of direction. The whole discussion of "possession beyond the will to hold", and the need to impose it upon the world, appears to be an emotional projection of attachment preferences. Natural Law, on the other hand, Respects No Person, Regards No Rules, Conducts Her Chaos, and Organizes Her Outcomes. "Chips", as they say, "Fall" accordingly where they predictably _may_ lay. _Opportunity is Omniscient_ , however, the _Semantics of Supremacy_ are always looking for an opportunity to redefine and tax.
That was one brave fucking move shipping artifacts through FedEx. I'd have definitely gone with UPS. They're not perfect (I worked there for 8+ years) but when it comes to the actual chances of your packages arriving in rhe shape you sent them in, UPS is leagues above FedEx. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that they dont even consider their drivers/delivery people employees. Instead they're "independent contractors" that get none of rhe benefits of being employed there. On the other hand, UPS drivers are employees and are members of one of the US's biggest and strongest unions. If you're shipping priceless artifacts, go with UPS.
I don't know if you can't really condemn archaeologists for putting their effort and money into saving artifacts during a humanitarian crisis, they're doing archaeology, their job. Preserving the past. The Taliban should be ashamed to bring it up when they're a key cause behind poverty in their nation, being the actual government of Afghanistan. Just take the money from the Indian archaeologists and then redistribute it if you truly care about poverty, don't blow up ancient history.
Yeah, like it's not as though Bamiyan fragments could then feed people. Also, just yesterday I saw a news article claiming that the taliban is trying to open the site up for tourism (yes, despite blowing the monuments up) with paid admissions... And like. I don't think anyone in the world feels comfortable with the idea of financing the taliban to see the consequences of a thing they blew up.
An interesting read for you might be Trevor Reed's "Indigenous Dignity And The Right To Be Forgotten", a treatise about the right of indigenous American tribes' right to destroy pieces of their history that they would no longer like to be either held by academic institutions or in existence at all. It also brings to the fore that the perpetual preservation of "history" is not a universal value and falls more in line with Western European perspectives on time, life, and death (a perspective which seems to ignore the life/death cycles inherent to existence in favor of preserving only the "life" state). Reed is a lawyer and ethnomusicologist who also highlights the ways US corporations retain more rights over proprietary data than do individual citizens. The irony perhaps (that seems to be highlighted by the Badiou piece and the concept of walled world and neo-colonialism) is the history of and continued looting and willful destruction of ancient sites by Euro archaeologists, traders, and governments in order to maintain a version of history that supports a view of Western Euro superiority. In such Hobby Lobby's actions fall right in line with a pre-existing tradition, and as you point out market. This video is amazing. Really appreciate your placing things in context and providing citations for all presented quotations and info! So thorough with a lot of resources for folks to follow up on and continue to research:) 💯
I remember hearing about this and being both infuriated and flabbergasted, but i didn't live in an area with HL so i didn't really hear much more about it. Thank you for making a video
I remember this. At the time, they also wanted to block the Affordable Care act because it provided birth control for employees. Classic Christian Empire Tactics.
Up to a half million people were wiped out in the Gulf War. Estimate vary. War crime. Disgusting all around. I was horrified to know these antiquities were also unprotected.
I'm not trying to be mean, I like your videos. But I also think it would be worth doing something to improve the proofreading. Typically this is a non-issue, but some slides have 3 distinct typos, more than one per sentence. At this point it actually does get distracting and in rare cases can make the text harder to understand.
I'm of the opinion. The archeological sites should be properly cataloged by the professionals for the important context that comes with it. But at the end of the day states and museums should not be allowed to monopolize ownership of antiquities. Having worked with museums before and talked to others as well. The majority of museum's collection is stored in the basement or some other archive. Never seeing the light of day. Sometimes not even allowing interested researchers to go study them upon request. This should not be. At least with a private owner. The object will be cared for and will be appreciated by somebody. oftentimes large private collections will publish study books on their collections. More than can be said for these dank basement collections in museums That sometimes never see human eyes beyond when they were first found.
I would say that history deserves to be preserved and the person to do it should be the person who holds it. That said all other points are moot and the person that is most likely to preserve it should posses it. It's politics after that and for that I have no opinion.
Yeah but "most likely to preserve" isn't a concrete thing. Even well established and well maintained organizations dedicated to looking after artifacts can have issues (bias, fraud etc). There's an argument around it because there has to be
I absolutely get why they wanted to preserve thia anomalous random epic that didn't match the normal religious historical beliefs or story found in summarian and Arkadian chaldeans traditions. The very things that divided Judaism and Christianity to this very day actually makes for an suspicious moment of why it made some feel so threatened or worried about it in this way.
I'm Iraqi and funnily enough I found this video through its mention under the Valkyria one. Very informative and well researched, it's evident in its tendency not fall into the old and tired orientalist pitfalls, reductive/unsubstantial narratives and narrow dichotomies that have unfortunately characterized most of the videos covering my country on this website. You still might be surprised to learn that as someone from a Christian background I still appreciate the distinction between the grassroots Iraqi resistance which was ostensibly secular and the foreign fundamentalist groups that spawned independent of it, often in direct opposition.
One thing to keep in mind that 'zoning' also exists from an Islamic or Eastern viewpoint. I cannot count how many people in my native Bangladesh justified the Russian invasion of Ukraine using typical Russian talking points or waving it away as something "that happens" in Eastern Europe. Similarly, it is next to impossible under the threat of death to conduct proselytization of religious other than Islam in Muslim majority societies due the 'zoning' classifications of the 'lands of Islam' or the 'lands of war/polytheism/ignorance' (areas where Islamic norms do not dominate). Muslims also have a 'chosen people' mindset, manifesting in total opposition to what is considered to be 'shrik' or polytheism (something that has poisoned relations with Bangladesh's indigenous Hindus). You may be surprised to find out that out of all the things ISIS was opposed to, artifact destruction was not considered to be important in this part of the world. Similarly, Mullah Omar's whining and bitching about funds being offered for the Bamyan statues but not food is sympathized with strongly among many quarters of society in Bangladesh that consider themselves to be religious. The culture war of Bengali secularism vs Islam is something that haunts discourse regarding the Bengali New Year which involves processions with stylized images of animals and people. A plurality of the population here experiences a massive upsurge in their aniconist sympathies, often becoming extremely vitriolic. Of course, Islam is a foreign religion to Bengal and it being a force of Arabization is a completely different topic. Hatred and disdain towards artifacts and antiquities are not unique to extremist groups such as Taliban and ISIS. It is written into the dictates of a holy book deemed to be the unchanging word of God applicable for all time. For a Muslim world constantly fed with the narrative that Islam is the 'refined' Abrahamic religion destined to convert the whole world, it demands objective analysis from Western scholars removed from the asymmetrical GWOT-derived narrative of oppressor vs oppressed. The most frustrating thing to watch is the fact that Western scholars and so-called 'progressive' ideologues remain absolutely unwilling to apply the same objectivity and critical lens to Islam that they apply to Christianity. This has to change without exception. It doesn't help those hiding in Muslim majority societies that are 'othered' and hated.
Really love this. Even the tie into global economy and neoimperialism. However, i could be wrong, but the destruction of the buddhas in Afghanistan was explicitly not religious, but rather an act of spite in the face of world that cared more about iraqi artifacts than starving children. Atleast according to the quotes I could find.
Ngl; this is still less surprising than the time I was walking around a Hobby Lobby with my mom and saw a Sailor Moon section. Nothing else explaining it, it was just there. Still can’t wrap my head around that
The old rule is "if you show it don't say it, if you said it - don't show it." Its a good rule. I'd either have the whole thing in titles or only the ephemera attached to what you're saying. We are trained to think extra words means extra info - which can be irritating when that's *_sometimes_* true with you. Otherwise, EXCELLENT presentation. EDIT: Yeah. I hate the title cards. It makes me not want to look at the screen, but then you throw good extra bits on the screen occasionally.
That was hilarious how you did not apply the same standard to Hobby lobby as you did to Saddam. As if Hobby lobby isn't for some settler people trying to justify their theology
This video, in particular the zoning part, gives a lot of words to the injustice I feel as someone from one of these "zoned" regions. We ceased to have control over our countries the moment exploiting the land was deemed lucrative in some way. Thank you for introducing me to this zoning concept.
Tough subject. I' have opinions on both sides of the fence,. I see when Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction i saw a great parallel to when Hitler dressed SS guys up as Polish military as a lie to invade Poland. I haven't voted since. After a great deal of thought I now firmly believe that the purpose of any party is to overpower the individual. So, if you say we are all equal and you belong to a party you are a hippocrate. My 9th Great Grandfather landed here in 1629 which makes me a Native American. I have no Indian in me, though. I cannot see how I would have any rights to anything owned by any of my ancestors.
As someone who resides in the UK, it does feel we should return the Greek artefacts, they have immense economic value, not just inherent cultural value. As an Hellenophile who seldom travels, I've seen the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and the Minoan collections in Oxford, amongst other treasures, I spent money in the localities that I wouldn't have otherwise, the Museums themselves sell merchandise with the various artefacts emblazoned on them. I have less of an incentive to go to Greece and spend my money there. It seems absurd that the UK is profiting off of this, they do draw massive crowds of tourists, it's no small deal.
When I went to US Navy basic training in 1986 we were told about Saddam using chemical weapons on ethnic minorities (the Kurds) so I'm not sure why y'all art collectors didn't go ahead and take care of that! Oh, it wasn't you & some guy threw a shoe..
Seriously. They'll put a black guy away for 15 years for smoking a blunt, but some ultra-rich degen corpo commits ACTUAL crimes and it's a fucking miracle if he ever sees the inside of a jail cell for a few weeks.
Saddam and his regime were unutterably inhuman as regards their treatment of anyone who fell foul of them (practically anyone not with the Ba'ath party). However, he was entirely in keeping with the ancient kings of Sumer and Akkad which he was styling himself after. Translated cuneiform tablets relate how brutal they were. Weird how history repeats and human behaviour remains relatively consistent.
I'm only a quarter way through and don't know if it will matter much (FWIW existing evidence makes hobby lobby an easier target than the DoD), but already seeing that one should take the book's claims with a pinch of salt. He's playing very fast and loose with facts, to conjure assumptions in reality for a better story. None of what I'm about to say is hard to find out about, nor have I witnessed a claim they are controversial facts. There was no US attempted narrative about toppling Saddam statues, and US troops were forbidden from doing that kind of thing. In all but one case Iraqis just yanked the many Saddam statues down themselves, and the one exception waiver-ed by brass (the one you've seen videos of armored vehicles towing it down) was an exceptionally huge statue in an awkward location: waiver-ed because of some combination of Iraqis asking for help and their currently available solutions appearing plausibly dangerous. So in lieu of a giant Saddam head shaped rock, stacked with kinetic energy maybe bowling-balling into a thick crowd of innocents at the other end of the ropes (or something) they relaxed the rule and helped the Iraqis in what they were gonna get done anyway. Just for fun context and I cannot corroborate it except that it sorta lines up with attitudes I witnessed: some fellow OIF 1 veterans reported Iraqis requesting GW Bush statues or the contacts to get them commissioned. Like not out of exhuberance or fandom but because it was assumed that's what you do when control changes hands, and that we would approve instead of finding it weird / plausibly that we must have more than a handful of president statues ourselves. Also tanks to protect buildings in post-Iraqi-army Baghdad? What smarmy drug is this guy on: they are useless to that end. Not that it mattered because very nearly all US tanks were in the Baghdad-Balad area at the time (along with a disproportionately huge number of troops). That point is a core aspect of my lived experience because my unit's main job was delivering a dilemma that Saddam must move a whole armored brigade or more out of Baghdad-Balad to play cat and mouse with largely unsupported light-fighters-- special forces and 173rd paratroopers behind him, in the north (then big Army gets to just sweep the capitol area faster and with fewer things blown up) or give up lightly defended northern infrastructure and a major airbase and airport (Kirkuk) capable of heavy transport at the very outset of the war. He chose the latter and turtled up with his tanks so it took marginally more/longer to collapse the last holdouts and unseat him, and so 173rd has fewer tank stories than we might have and there was only one firefight employing Javelins in the north ;). The overall point about manpower to spare is... truthy. It's unavoidable (there was no supposed Rumsfeld choice), an invasion force cannot possibly replace all the police forces of a dictatorial regime overnight, and even trying to and failing would mean also failing to continue mission. US troops were asked to stop to intervene in cases of lethal force being used on others and rape/armed robbery, and (IIRC) eeeeverything else had to be left to the scrabbled together Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (former pro-US militia, vetted cops, pol opposition). No sized invasion was going to be enough for being adequate beat-cops at the same time -- police forces are way more numerous and also just consider 'tooth to tail ratio' and that most "troops on the ground" by media numbers stayed inside the wire of their base by design (street cops, conversely, tend to outnumber their support staff, at least for basic patrol services -- big teeth, small tail). I'm sure the ICDC were under US instruction to pay special attention to things that valuable, first educated instinct is that ICDC corruption (not that the vast majority weren't great) saw most of the shit go missing (I mean the portion after the collapse of the Iraqi army in the given city, if any -- literally can't do anything in disputed or Iraqi army territory where the looters realized the regime is too busy to stop them. Plus even if you could do that, would you want to? Foreign occupying troops arresting and jailing people even for little things, per their own internal policy (since crimes, punishments, and due process and other rights are at in-between stages, post ba'athist law but pre-constitution)? Sounds like nightmare fuel for the apolitical but paranoid (including, 'hey Iraqis aren't guarding or allowed in the museum so they're pilfering super-valuables like the old british empire') to start resisting in vague ways being ripe for organized insurgents to take over for free manpower. People tend to want community organizers and even poorly trained volunteer police in that situation over the jolly green giant who brought plenty of body bags.
I didn't realise how old this video is. But it's still relevant and hasn't lost anything. But, just to add another layer of complexity to it The underlying belly of the beast. War creates chaos, and there is a ready black market, and you connected all the dots well. But there is one aspect you didn't hit on, but, really, it is outside your discussion, even though it is deeply connected. Corporations profit from war, and the resulting chaos helps hide the shifting of wealth. But war had to be created, so that's where the next layer comes in, you would need an entire video series to derive into the corporate connections between the Intel agencies and the background undermining of countries that leads to the conditions to start wars, and they leads to so many religious, ideological, ethical and geopolitical factors it's impossible to unravel, but to put it very simply, the rogue elements of the Intel agencies have enough means at their disposal to blackmail leaders of industry, countries, and even international organisations such as the UN, and the WHO, so the are the thugs for hire for those corporations that want to get around state "problems" And the CIA did find both the Taliban and ISIS, as well as numerous other "terrorist" groups and have been proven to destabilise countries for corporations.
Not a dig towards you as it would hve been wildly off context to mention, but it always annoys me how Sunni aniconism and Byzantine iconoclasm are depicted as totally unrelated. As if iconoclasm came out if nowhere and has nothing to do with other nearby religious traditions. Maybe im wrong, but I doubt it
I can see why people might see it this way but I dont see calling something "a state" lends it legitimacy in the sense of "I support this existing". When an organization takes control of territory and starts acting like a state they are one for practical purposes. It's just like the Confederacy while we debate on whether it was "actually a state" because it wasnt recognized as a country to the people under it it was a very real state with great power over them while it existed. Same with corporations in our present day. As corporations become more powerful than "the state" its inevitable that at some point they will become "the state" for all practical purposes even if they deny being such as part of their strategy. This is already started happening in many places.
Private ownership of artifacts isn’t neccesarily a bad thing. I’d rather have important ancient artifacts in the hands of private owners than publicly available in very unstable nations that regularly destroys artifacts
I truly admire the dedication of creating long form content without necessarily seeing an immediate "reward" in terms of subscribers / monetization. Reminds me of old TH-cam, back when people actually had something they really needed to say and used the platform to do just so. Needless to say that I am recommending this video to friends that are studying Sustainable Heritage Management. Keep it up man, thank you for your great work
us army personnel have stated when they were told to raid and steal from iraq museums, as well as to destroy other artifacts - they realized the corruption permeated that agency.
the craziest part of this is that they trusted FedEx with the artifacts.
I'm a FedEx delivery driver listening to this at work and I nearly spit out my water when I heard that 😂
@@Not_what_it_used_to_be
For what it's worth, I trust you all more than UPS. Sure as f*ck more than Amazon.
For real...I mean at least use UPS. Everything I get from FedEx is always smashed to bits.
@@terrydavis8451 they are good for pregrinding your weed though
I write this in my fedex truck on break. I once was entrusted with a Yap stone, an artifact from polynesia that I was told is sort of like currency and a famliy/land record. It was about 80lbs by itself, and was in a heavy wooden crate. I got to take a look at it before it was sealed up. I'd like to say I took pretty good care of it while it was in my possession. The family who shipped it was polynesian, and it was their own stone but they were sending it to a museum, I forget where. So yeah, lots of fun things show up occasionally.
Hobby Lobby's Hammurabi Robbing Hobby.
LMFAO
This comment is amazing
Stealing ancient relics is a hobby right? That’s what I learned from the British museum
The british were not hobbyists, they were professionals😂
It's part of their culture
Epic post, this one landed 100%.
The difference between a professional British looter and an amateur was the professional got rich and the amateur got bankrupt.
There were definitely both kinds participating.
@@harrylion6689hell, it's *most* of their culture
I think I should own all ancient artifacts in the world, since I’m the only person in the world that I trust.
I'll back you up. I believe you're a nice koala
You van protect all the ancient phallysus 😂
Sadam Hussain riding a chariot with missiles, helicopters, jets and gunboats has to be the single funniest image I've seen in a good while.
Lol
kinda goes hard though
The pretentious pomposity and silly pageantry often seen in authoritarian regimes ...
Goes so fucking hard
Can you send me this?
i was surprised to hear you say this wasn't your usual sort of content at the end! i'm an independent assyriologist and as a first time viewer thought this was incredibly well-structured and well-researched. i can't believe you've not gotten more views, but i'm glad youtube dropped this on me and will definitely be watching more
Weird...I just thought to myself the other day after watching a different video, "I wonder if there's other "-ologies" like there is Egyptology." I was too busy to look it up then and the thought faded. Now I know there is!
I know what Assyriologist means, but it still sounds like.. something else, far more cheeky,
I can't stop imagining these priceless ancient artifacts literally sent to a hobby lobby store to be carefully unpacked and guarded by khaki clad employees.
Hobby lobby did not buy to the artifacts to resale . Not one piece that hobby lobby have in its possession was bought from the citizens. You are a dreamer that you don’t think that a Muslim would sell or destroy pieces that Muhammad was associated with.
Hobby lobby did not set up the sales of the artifacts. You are a dreamer and not want the controlling faction to sell. Like an archeologist can some how have an input on where any artifacts stay.
We see hundreds of antiquities traveling around the world in shows constantly, and few of the shows are actually owned by the government where the pieces where discovered. It feels more like you have a connection here.
Obama’s government’s was committed to coming hard at Hobby Lobby . Mr. Greene refused to provide the death pill for abortions to his employees and Obama was trying to force that down the throat of all. So Hobby Lobby and the Catholic nuns fought him all the way to the supreme court and won.
That pissed the government off tremendously. They wanted companies and churches to pay to kill babies up until that Babies was delivered.
Is this the reason for your attack? You hated Hobby Lobby for refusing to participate in such a sick act. Against what they believe in.
I now have a lot of questions about the flower pots my mom bought from there
4:50
"Sure he might not be a good guy... but when are we going to get funding like this again?"
-Some Iraqi professor of antiquity, probably
Considering the US based interim government (the CPA) managed to "lose" 8 billion dollars intended for reconstruction of the country, 1.7bn of which being found in cash, in a bunker in Lebanon, the answer is either "never again" or "go digging in Lebanon"
quite similar to the relationship between archeologists and the nazis.
@@flyingfoamtv2169you fell for Nazi propaganda. They increased funding for Archaeology a little bit for some time only and even then they forced archaeologists to go on stupid quests of finding Atlantis, relics of the gods or the damn holy grail. They didn't let them do what they thought was important and good, cuz it's the Nazis dude.
@@Rosencreutzzz: Isn’t that the truth. The missing billions in cash story went away faster than the Jeffrey Epstein “suicide” story.
@@flyingfoamtv2169Nah more like relationships of intellectuals with governments in general. Saddam didn't have plans like Generalplan Ost and is more like a power tripping dictator anyway which was supported by the US before the Kuwaiti debacle.
Daesh داعش is also an acronym meaning الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام, exactly the same as english.
they hate it because acronyms are mostly reserved for unimportant stuff in Arabic.
Strange. Just don’t like or value acronyms?
Who hates it?
Daesh hates the acronym isis? Or who hates what exactly...
@@odearurded Daesh hates the acronym Daesh. They want to be known by their full name: al-Dawla al-ʾIslāmiyya fī al-ʿIrāq wa al-Shām.
I would say I'm shocked that you were able to pull so much depth and insight and complexity from this story, but I'm not because I've seen you do it before and thats what makes this channel something special. In a small but real way I will think about the world differently from now on. Hopefully this one catches the algorithm sometime or another, definitely would be deserved, and something more people should hear!
In a world where the pure academic search for truth isn't accorded the respect and protection it axiomatically deserves; in that world, civilization is a joke .
I didn't know objects could be named in court cases. USA vs Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets; and Approximately Three Thousand (3,000) Ancient Clay Bullae makes us seem really petty and bad at counting without context.
Subbed and liked lfg
Then you will love
USA vs. approximately 350 pounds of shark fins
@@elli7543I SAW THAT ONE! lmao
i did love it, hope the US had a good de-fins on that one lol
Lol to funny but I'm american and I found that last artifact they said Arab imagrant haha so funny to me doj it was stolen from the county join one of my stays and mfs keep it then I see it on tv
"in the case of the Denver museum owning stolen Cambodian artifacts"
[🎉🍾COLORADO MENTIONED!!!🎉🍾]
*Sniff sniff* Oohhh that's why I smell crude oil, hog shit, and dog food in the air.
Fed heaven
About the conclusion I also think it makes sense to note that this is usually the standard we apply to trade goods. "innocent until proven guilty" is only the case for people but for trade goods of all kinds it's usually "suspect until proven trustworthy", food agencies don't just assume that food is safe until an accident happens, they require the producers to prove that it is safe and regularly inspect facilities to make sure that this is the case. Consumer products usually also have to undergo some form of testing, depending on their application, before they can be approved. It obviously should be the case for antiquities as well, that providence needs to be proven rigorously going all the way back to the source otherwise they should be treated as illegal, though frankly I just think there should be a blanket ban on their sale and the sale of paleontological fossils just like how the EU just has a blanket ban on the trade and sale of wild animals. I don't think there's any scenario where it's justifiable for a private collector to own these things, firstly because it limits scientific access to them, secondly because they can't possibly claim ownership over them when they didn't commission their production, and thirdly because obviously they are the common heritage of all mankind.
the problem with this is that private ownership of this stuff is the basis and driving force behind much of our modern collection of these things. entire museums are built on the donated bragging rights collections of rich old dudes. whether we like it or not people collect these things for self aggrandizement and glory as much if not more so than scientific advancement or philanthropy. also there's very much a grey area. is my collecting of 100-year-old beer cans illegal now? when does trash become archeology? who would be in charge of deciding that? etc
@@Dap1ssmonkthere is a vast difference between trash and ancient antiques, Especially because there are laws in place in the united states and in iraq which makes taking their antiques a crime, So I would assume that you could find a better definition of what they consider antiques in some piece of legislation or international treaty
The UN probably has a good definition as well as part of the world heritage site program etc
24:15
Minor correction -- the organization you list as the Oriental Institute has recently rebranded as the "Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in West Asia & North Africa." you may consider listing them as such if you need to mention them in the future. Great video! :)
I took the list from a passage in the book, which was from 2009 so I wasn't sure if they were the same org, but good to know.
Thanks for making note of it though.
It is a damn shame your non-map game content gets buried. This is great.
My Byzantine studies professor worked on some early Christian archeological sites around the time that ISIS came onto the scene.
He recalled to us that their location was kept SUPER secret, even the photos of the site would have their backgrounds edited out so that it couldnt be deduced from the environment.
OpSec was so tight because ISIS elements had a record of locating active archeological sites through publications so they could be looted/destroyed
You keep me fascinated. You're one of the few creators out there pumping academic content with little commodification of content, while still retaining an 'image'. I truly appreciate how you combine different disciplines all with the same rigor of research of one another to create your story.
You mentioned you'd leave many links to read in the description, alongside Badiou. When you have the time, please leave them, I'd love a deeper dive.
This is maybe the fifth time I've promised links and then forgotten to add them in. I think it's because I have a list of articles and the links I promise are in the middle of those, and my brain goes "wait remember TH-cam doesn't like links that lead "off platform" so I just... forget.
@@Rosencreutzzz Ah, the classic "keep 50 tabs open or else the information will leave your short term memory"
Thank you for leaving the links ❤
@@BirdEgg123so, I’m not the only one!?
I don’t have to suffer in silence?!
The Iraq invasion is characterized by such wide sweeping incompetence that the incompetence seems intentional very often. I mean the army itself on multiple occasions told Rumsfeld that the plans weren't realistic and would result in chaos and fail to create a democratic state. In their own plans the Iraqi oil fields were meant to stay nationalized and help pay for infrastructure. They also believed they needed at least 300.000 American soldiers to occupy the country but they only had 21k IIRC, which wasn't even enough to guard former Iraqi army magazines and bases, let alone prevent looting. The looted weapons were of course later used by insurgents to attack coalition soldiers, after said coalition had managed to anger basically everyone with heavy handed tactics such as door to door raids, major cuts to the public sector and even direct attacks on news agencies.
The fact that the invasion even succeeded is nothing close to a miracle, at one point about 20.000 American Soldiers including and armored division was a hair breadths away from being cut off from supplies in the middle of enemy territory when supply convoys started being ambushed by Iraqi guerillas. This was only prevented by the deployment of the SAS in cities to protect the convoys but if not it might have been the biggest American military defeat since WWII.
Yeah, but how else would they transfer tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to campaign donors?
Id say yes they succeeded at invading, but the invasion was not a success imo lolol I
You don't seem to get anything right. The initial invasion of Iraq was accomplished with 160000 troops. The invasion began on the 19th of May 2003 and the country was taken by the 1st of March. There were never plans to let Iraq's oil industry remain nationalized. The US oil industry spent record sums to get Bush and Cheney elected and planning for the war began around February 2001
@@djg4534how did it not succeed?
@@basedgamerguy818 Isn't Iraq also being controlled by terrorist groups? We retreated leaving behind millions in military equipment.
Where exactly did we succeed?
Im so glad you didnt do the emotionally visceral thing you could have done during the Iconoclasm section. I just sort of knee jerked and scrolled down as soon as I saw the word because I've *seen* the videos of what they did to Nimrud and it was incredibly devastating and makes me cry to think about.
This may be a nonsense thought, but my instinct here is that this represents the next step (or A next step) in the shifting of Imperialism from directly nation-state based to more indirect and corporatized (so, you know, corporate colonialism)
Lenin already had that idea, you are a century too late lol
@tnttiger3079 Oh, I'm well aware that corporate Imperialism isn't a new concept! I was just discussing how that applied to this particular Hobby Lobby incident. I sucked at research in grad school, I refuse to claim new ideas!
I guess it would more accurately be a switch back to corporate colonialism, i.e. the East India Company.
@@LordVarksoncame to write that.
That's what the World Economic Forum is for. Always trust your instincts...
International corporations have neither the allegiance, nor the accountability to any particular nation. They are determining global policy without consent of the population and their plans are already well under way.
This video has been sitting in my recommendations feed for a long time. I underestimated you. By a lot. Very well done.
“Daesh” is just the Arabic acronym for ISIS’s full name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham.
now THIS is a good video topibc
Hobby Lobby supports Christian Values. The values of the Crusaders to loot.
👏🏼
The looting of Cambodian artifacts is wild. Think the Met was fighting returning a few artifacts a couple years ago.
I used to walk past an Egyptian obelisk in Central park pretty often. “Cleopatra’s needle.” Came from Alexandria. It was a gift from the Egyptian government in the 1800s, essentially a bribe to the US to stay away as France and Great Britain vied for hegemony within Egypt (Egypt became a British protectorate a decade after the gift was given).
Even “legally” acquired artifacts can’t be unbound from colonial pillaging.
ETA: I just found out the Met has actually announced it is finally returning those artifacts!
Also wanted to recommend the NYT Op-Ed "Mighty Shiva Was Never Meant to Live in Manhattan" by Erin Thompson. In typical NYT fashion, the title the editors gave it is absolutely abysmal in my opinion (not only does the dated phrasing "Mighty Shiva" reek of Orientalism, "Shiva" never even comes up in the body of the article. No Hindu artifacts do!). What the article is actually about is the potential for museums to make repatriation into an opportunity, rather than a loss, to use technology to commemorate repatriation and celebrate and educate on the artifacts that were once there and have now been returned home.
Hi Rosencreutz! I don't know if you are going to see this comment because of the time after the upload of the video but i just wanna to say, as a political scientist with specialization in international relations and love for history and interest in working in the protection of ancient artifacts and sites, that your video hit me where i feel. In one hand, the use of the concept "Zoning" as places of influence whitout the "interference" of the State is something that i never heard in all my years of study and writing articles, for that reason thanks for teaching me something new. Also, the correlation with the looting, zoning and ISIS is great. And in the other hand, it breaks my heart hearing everything that happened with the sites, of course i care about the people but when I saw the destruction of Palmyra in live i started crying, seeing that kinda broke me in the moment, so much lost and for nothing. I didn't know about that Captain of USA that wanted to protect the Museum i wish to be like that but having the means to really be able to protect those sites and places.
Did... did you actually play a slowed down version of "greek to me" from Age of Mythology? Holy Shit that's great.
Well done. I was a young SGT in 2003 and it was conducted by ideological civilians and officers with smart sounding names like "Neo-Conservative" but really they are just adult men that see the world like a John Wayne movie. Quick and easy narratives, with no promethean foresight or preparation, and a childish entitlement to getting the girl.
Greed, hypocrisy, willfullly breaking many laws. Just what I would expect from a Christian Corporation.
Ukrainian flag in the profile picture. Just what i would expect from a war mongering sheep.
"through deception thou shalt do war"
And here I thought Hobby Lobby couldn’t get any worse
It sounds like the grey market might be more core to this video than you realized. What are "places where this happens" or Zones other than the grey market of humanitarianism?
The idea that there can be a "place where this happens" is saying that you can commit crimes against humanity, it's just improper to do it in certain places. And opening up that possibility allows products of mass crime to enter the global market.
18:30 - And possibly a neoconservative tendency to take Western cultural characteristics for granted. Didn't even occur to them that the artifacts would be looted the instant the dictator was toppled, must have assumed the Iraqis would be as orderly as the Germans.
Which is also pretty funny given the Germans looted everything they could themselves.
I like watching your videos before bed. You have a soothing voice and I learn a lot before I sleep.
Wow. Great job! The title really caught my eye! I knew nothing about this until starting this video and couldn’t have been more excited to continue watching. Every time I had a question about the about something it was almost immediately addressed soon after and didn’t leave me guessing much at all! Thanks for such a cool entertaining video Mr Rosencreutz!
Conflict Cuneiform.. Bravo, Sir!
This was really interesting. Thank you so much for making it!
What does the epic of Gilgamesh have to do with the Bible anyway?
Hey dude, just found your channel from your recent Paradox video. I’ve watched some of your stuff now and I am very impressed, this is high quality stuff you are doing.
16:17 Ohhh I see where you’re getting confused. We’re the worlds police NOT the worlds peacekeepers. Hope that helps! If it does you’d be the first :)
My favorite part of the video was the Zoning Of Iraq part, although I don't know much it holds up from a Marxist perspective. The modern nation state as a dictatorship of the Capitalist class is already in a state of anarchy. They will take as much as they can, as much as the proletariat will allow them to. A large "french" firm, is only french in the sense that a cruise ship is from Panama. It utilizes the French state's power in international courts, because it provides enough value to it that its not worth going elsewhere. And the french state allows the corporation to do this while providing nothing because they are one and the same, or at least, the line where a large firm and its host state is blurred. The State is puppeted by a million tiny strings.
The "zoning" of Iraq emerges from imperialism, the people of Iraq had no agency to stop ISIS, as they were underdeveloped and deprived of capital by the Global North, each individual citizen of Iraq wasn't organized enough, their moral destroyed by war, and radicalized to ISIS's side, they lacked any agency to act and repel them.
The theorizes withering away of the state likely wont happen as companies lack the legitimacy in regions where people are organized and wealthy enough to stop them (the Global North), although, may happen in the Global South.
What about having museums of fake artifacts? We would need a kinder word than the word "fake". The purpose would be to keep alive the skills and techniques and technologies of different cultures.
I mean either that'd be a replica or just a more modern artifact. If it's a tradition that still survives and a museum simply commissions one for its collection then it's still just as much an authentic artifact it's just newer. For the reasons you mentioned this would really be preferable, museums aren't just static buildings to display stuff they're also research institutions and meant to preserve cultural legacies so if possible it makes way more sense to just commission someone to make it. It also has the bonus that you can get the people who actually use the thing in question to provide commentary on it and even give demonstrations of how it is used, which the museum itself could use and just supplement with its own experts.
Reproductions
consider this 90% of museum displays of dinosaur bones are just castings of original bone collections
Israelis as ‘middlemen’. Sounds familiar.
I am unsure where this whole video is going but, as someone who's partially in the palaeontological field, we HATE fossil smuggling, the black market and the exploitation and mistreatment of people from similarly exploited countries that are now poor due to it. Rare fossils should go to research institutions to be studied by science, not to be sold to private collectors. Plentifuls like shark teeth, various mollusc fossils, crustaceans, trilobite fossils and the like can and should be available to a public market but stuff that is important to science should remain accessible. The exact same stands for archaeological findings and they should also exist in their regions of origin and not be looted to be taken to goddamn London or something...sheesh.
tl;dr - Myanmar amber is invaluable to science
Myanmar amber is being excavated by a suffering and exploited workforce, then sold for high prices and smuggled
good video but i can't help but point out that the verb form is legitim*ize*, not legitim*ate*
Not to defend "looting"; but this context of "things rightfully _belong_ to _Somewhere_ is intriguing.
I would think the entire concept of "ownership" is purely an intellectual undertaking. That is to say, aside from the mental participant's reasoning, mother nature seems to care less where things _Go_ than where they _Become_ (materialized). The latter requires precision in formula and formation; the former doesn't even require intention or a sense of direction.
The whole discussion of "possession beyond the will to hold", and the need to impose it upon the world, appears to be an emotional projection of attachment preferences.
Natural Law, on the other hand, Respects No Person, Regards No Rules, Conducts Her Chaos, and Organizes Her Outcomes.
"Chips", as they say, "Fall" accordingly where they predictably _may_ lay.
_Opportunity is Omniscient_ , however, the _Semantics of Supremacy_ are always looking for an opportunity to redefine and tax.
What are we, the little people, the many and ignorant, are supposed to do then?
That was one brave fucking move shipping artifacts through FedEx. I'd have definitely gone with UPS. They're not perfect (I worked there for 8+ years) but when it comes to the actual chances of your packages arriving in rhe shape you sent them in, UPS is leagues above FedEx. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that they dont even consider their drivers/delivery people employees. Instead they're "independent contractors" that get none of rhe benefits of being employed there. On the other hand, UPS drivers are employees and are members of one of the US's biggest and strongest unions. If you're shipping priceless artifacts, go with UPS.
I don't know if you can't really condemn archaeologists for putting their effort and money into saving artifacts during a humanitarian crisis, they're doing archaeology, their job. Preserving the past. The Taliban should be ashamed to bring it up when they're a key cause behind poverty in their nation, being the actual government of Afghanistan. Just take the money from the Indian archaeologists and then redistribute it if you truly care about poverty, don't blow up ancient history.
Yeah, like it's not as though Bamiyan fragments could then feed people.
Also, just yesterday I saw a news article claiming that the taliban is trying to open the site up for tourism (yes, despite blowing the monuments up) with paid admissions...
And like. I don't think anyone in the world feels comfortable with the idea of financing the taliban to see the consequences of a thing they blew up.
Have you seen the videos of Taliban really hating their new office jobs now they're running the government?
An interesting read for you might be Trevor Reed's "Indigenous Dignity And The Right To Be Forgotten", a treatise about the right of indigenous American tribes' right to destroy pieces of their history that they would no longer like to be either held by academic institutions or in existence at all. It also brings to the fore that the perpetual preservation of "history" is not a universal value and falls more in line with Western European perspectives on time, life, and death (a perspective which seems to ignore the life/death cycles inherent to existence in favor of preserving only the "life" state). Reed is a lawyer and ethnomusicologist who also highlights the ways US corporations retain more rights over proprietary data than do individual citizens.
The irony perhaps (that seems to be highlighted by the Badiou piece and the concept of walled world and neo-colonialism) is the history of and continued looting and willful destruction of ancient sites by Euro archaeologists, traders, and governments in order to maintain a version of history that supports a view of Western Euro superiority. In such Hobby Lobby's actions fall right in line with a pre-existing tradition, and as you point out market.
This video is amazing. Really appreciate your placing things in context and providing citations for all presented quotations and info! So thorough with a lot of resources for folks to follow up on and continue to research:) 💯
I think stealing artifacts to sell for money is inexcusable as the culutural legacy trumps the individual.
So there I was late Wednesday night, scoping out Antiquities on eBay.
I regularly steal clip board rubber bands to stim with from hobby lobby every new shipment they get of supply
This is the shit. Without TH-cam mainstream media would never cover this.
This really minds me of the Qurnah disaster.**
I remember hearing about this and being both infuriated and flabbergasted, but i didn't live in an area with HL so i didn't really hear much more about it. Thank you for making a video
Damn I wasn't expecting a CIA brief. That's hi intelligence. Good job.
I remember this. At the time, they also wanted to block the Affordable Care act because it provided birth control for employees. Classic Christian Empire Tactics.
Up to a half million people were wiped out in the Gulf War. Estimate vary. War crime.
Disgusting all around. I was horrified to know these antiquities were also unprotected.
It's digusting that American, and Western populations generally have continued to vote for war criminals, and are complicit in mass murder.
Freakin amazing, well-researched video👌🏾 great job
what a title
I'm not trying to be mean, I like your videos. But I also think it would be worth doing something to improve the proofreading. Typically this is a non-issue, but some slides have 3 distinct typos, more than one per sentence. At this point it actually does get distracting and in rare cases can make the text harder to understand.
I'm of the opinion. The archeological sites should be properly cataloged by the professionals for the important context that comes with it. But at the end of the day states and museums should not be allowed to monopolize ownership of antiquities. Having worked with museums before and talked to others as well. The majority of museum's collection is stored in the basement or some other archive. Never seeing the light of day. Sometimes not even allowing interested researchers to go study them upon request. This should not be. At least with a private owner. The object will be cared for and will be appreciated by somebody. oftentimes large private collections will publish study books on their collections. More than can be said for these dank basement collections in museums That sometimes never see human eyes beyond when they were first found.
“liberal smugness” is your whole channel
I would say that history deserves to be preserved and the person to do it should be the person who holds it. That said all other points are moot and the person that is most likely to preserve it should posses it. It's politics after that and for that I have no opinion.
Yeah but "most likely to preserve" isn't a concrete thing. Even well established and well maintained organizations dedicated to looking after artifacts can have issues (bias, fraud etc). There's an argument around it because there has to be
Innocent until proven guilty is for people, not things.
I absolutely get why they wanted to preserve thia anomalous random epic that didn't match the normal religious historical beliefs or story found in summarian and Arkadian chaldeans traditions.
The very things that divided Judaism and Christianity to this very day actually makes for an suspicious moment of why it made some feel so threatened or worried about it in this way.
I'm Iraqi and funnily enough I found this video through its mention under the Valkyria one.
Very informative and well researched, it's evident in its tendency not fall into the old and tired orientalist pitfalls, reductive/unsubstantial narratives and narrow dichotomies that have unfortunately characterized most of the videos covering my country on this website.
You still might be surprised to learn that as someone from a Christian background I still appreciate the distinction between the grassroots Iraqi resistance which was ostensibly secular and the foreign fundamentalist groups that spawned independent of it, often in direct opposition.
One thing to keep in mind that 'zoning' also exists from an Islamic or Eastern viewpoint. I cannot count how many people in my native Bangladesh justified the Russian invasion of Ukraine using typical Russian talking points or waving it away as something "that happens" in Eastern Europe. Similarly, it is next to impossible under the threat of death to conduct proselytization of religious other than Islam in Muslim majority societies due the 'zoning' classifications of the 'lands of Islam' or the 'lands of war/polytheism/ignorance' (areas where Islamic norms do not dominate).
Muslims also have a 'chosen people' mindset, manifesting in total opposition to what is considered to be 'shrik' or polytheism (something that has poisoned relations with Bangladesh's indigenous Hindus). You may be surprised to find out that out of all the things ISIS was opposed to, artifact destruction was not considered to be important in this part of the world. Similarly, Mullah Omar's whining and bitching about funds being offered for the Bamyan statues but not food is sympathized with strongly among many quarters of society in Bangladesh that consider themselves to be religious.
The culture war of Bengali secularism vs Islam is something that haunts discourse regarding the Bengali New Year which involves processions with stylized images of animals and people. A plurality of the population here experiences a massive upsurge in their aniconist sympathies, often becoming extremely vitriolic. Of course, Islam is a foreign religion to Bengal and it being a force of Arabization is a completely different topic.
Hatred and disdain towards artifacts and antiquities are not unique to extremist groups such as Taliban and ISIS. It is written into the dictates of a holy book deemed to be the unchanging word of God applicable for all time.
For a Muslim world constantly fed with the narrative that Islam is the 'refined' Abrahamic religion destined to convert the whole world, it demands objective analysis from Western scholars removed from the asymmetrical GWOT-derived narrative of oppressor vs oppressed.
The most frustrating thing to watch is the fact that Western scholars and so-called 'progressive' ideologues remain absolutely unwilling to apply the same objectivity and critical lens to Islam that they apply to Christianity. This has to change without exception. It doesn't help those hiding in Muslim majority societies that are 'othered' and hated.
Mgs3 song in the background
that was a wild ride
great video, i had heared about the hobby lobby thing but this gave great information and context
Really love this. Even the tie into global economy and neoimperialism.
However, i could be wrong, but the destruction of the buddhas in Afghanistan was explicitly not religious, but rather an act of spite in the face of world that cared more about iraqi artifacts than starving children. Atleast according to the quotes I could find.
Ngl; this is still less surprising than the time I was walking around a Hobby Lobby with my mom and saw a Sailor Moon section.
Nothing else explaining it, it was just there.
Still can’t wrap my head around that
So much reaching in this
The old rule is "if you show it don't say it, if you said it - don't show it." Its a good rule.
I'd either have the whole thing in titles or only the ephemera attached to what you're saying. We are trained to think extra words means extra info - which can be irritating when that's *_sometimes_* true with you.
Otherwise, EXCELLENT presentation.
EDIT: Yeah. I hate the title cards. It makes me not want to look at the screen, but then you throw good extra bits on the screen occasionally.
Hobby lobby also bought stuff from isis
There ain't no right way to do the wrong thing.
That was hilarious how you did not apply the same standard to Hobby lobby as you did to Saddam. As if Hobby lobby isn't for some settler people trying to justify their theology
I’m Gilgamesh
This video, in particular the zoning part, gives a lot of words to the injustice I feel as someone from one of these "zoned" regions. We ceased to have control over our countries the moment exploiting the land was deemed lucrative in some way. Thank you for introducing me to this zoning concept.
Tough subject.
I' have opinions on both sides of the fence,.
I see when Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction i saw a great parallel to when Hitler dressed SS guys up as Polish military as a lie to invade Poland. I haven't voted since.
After a great deal of thought I now firmly believe that the purpose of any party is to overpower the individual. So, if you say we are all equal and you belong to a party you are a hippocrate.
My 9th Great Grandfather landed here in 1629 which makes me a Native American. I have no Indian in me, though. I cannot see how I would have any rights to anything owned by any of my ancestors.
No, the ancient artifacts should not be where they came from. The ancient artifacts should be in the British Museum. No exceptions.
Reminds me of the Qurnah disaster smh, which is one of the worst disasters in archaeological history smh......*
As someone who resides in the UK, it does feel we should return the Greek artefacts, they have immense economic value, not just inherent cultural value.
As an Hellenophile who seldom travels, I've seen the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and the Minoan collections in Oxford, amongst other treasures, I spent money in the localities that I wouldn't have otherwise, the Museums themselves sell merchandise with the various artefacts emblazoned on them.
I have less of an incentive to go to Greece and spend my money there.
It seems absurd that the UK is profiting off of this, they do draw massive crowds of tourists, it's no small deal.
When I went to US Navy basic training in 1986 we were told about Saddam using chemical weapons on ethnic minorities (the Kurds) so I'm not sure why y'all art collectors didn't go ahead and take care of that! Oh, it wasn't you & some guy threw a shoe..
Why is it when a thief is rich we are supposed to be concerned with what they think a fair penalty is.
Seriously. They'll put a black guy away for 15 years for smoking a blunt, but some ultra-rich degen corpo commits ACTUAL crimes and it's a fucking miracle if he ever sees the inside of a jail cell for a few weeks.
American evangelical...Hindus?! Wow that's crazy!
Saddam and his regime were unutterably inhuman as regards their treatment of anyone who fell foul of them (practically anyone not with the Ba'ath party).
However, he was entirely in keeping with the ancient kings of Sumer and Akkad which he was styling himself after. Translated cuneiform tablets relate how brutal they were.
Weird how history repeats and human behaviour remains relatively consistent.
I knew I thought of zoning but I didn't know it was so in depth. I consider my family's native county a zone even.
I'm only a quarter way through and don't know if it will matter much (FWIW existing evidence makes hobby lobby an easier target than the DoD), but already seeing that one should take the book's claims with a pinch of salt.
He's playing very fast and loose with facts, to conjure assumptions in reality for a better story. None of what I'm about to say is hard to find out about, nor have I witnessed a claim they are controversial facts. There was no US attempted narrative about toppling Saddam statues, and US troops were forbidden from doing that kind of thing. In all but one case Iraqis just yanked the many Saddam statues down themselves, and the one exception waiver-ed by brass (the one you've seen videos of armored vehicles towing it down) was an exceptionally huge statue in an awkward location: waiver-ed because of some combination of Iraqis asking for help and their currently available solutions appearing plausibly dangerous. So in lieu of a giant Saddam head shaped rock, stacked with kinetic energy maybe bowling-balling into a thick crowd of innocents at the other end of the ropes (or something) they relaxed the rule and helped the Iraqis in what they were gonna get done anyway.
Just for fun context and I cannot corroborate it except that it sorta lines up with attitudes I witnessed: some fellow OIF 1 veterans reported Iraqis requesting GW Bush statues or the contacts to get them commissioned. Like not out of exhuberance or fandom but because it was assumed that's what you do when control changes hands, and that we would approve instead of finding it weird / plausibly that we must have more than a handful of president statues ourselves.
Also tanks to protect buildings in post-Iraqi-army Baghdad? What smarmy drug is this guy on: they are useless to that end. Not that it mattered because very nearly all US tanks were in the Baghdad-Balad area at the time (along with a disproportionately huge number of troops). That point is a core aspect of my lived experience because my unit's main job was delivering a dilemma that Saddam must move a whole armored brigade or more out of Baghdad-Balad to play cat and mouse with largely unsupported light-fighters-- special forces and 173rd paratroopers behind him, in the north (then big Army gets to just sweep the capitol area faster and with fewer things blown up) or give up lightly defended northern infrastructure and a major airbase and airport (Kirkuk) capable of heavy transport at the very outset of the war. He chose the latter and turtled up with his tanks so it took marginally more/longer to collapse the last holdouts and unseat him, and so 173rd has fewer tank stories than we might have and there was only one firefight employing Javelins in the north ;).
The overall point about manpower to spare is... truthy. It's unavoidable (there was no supposed Rumsfeld choice), an invasion force cannot possibly replace all the police forces of a dictatorial regime overnight, and even trying to and failing would mean also failing to continue mission. US troops were asked to stop to intervene in cases of lethal force being used on others and rape/armed robbery, and (IIRC) eeeeverything else had to be left to the scrabbled together Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (former pro-US militia, vetted cops, pol opposition). No sized invasion was going to be enough for being adequate beat-cops at the same time -- police forces are way more numerous and also just consider 'tooth to tail ratio' and that most "troops on the ground" by media numbers stayed inside the wire of their base by design (street cops, conversely, tend to outnumber their support staff, at least for basic patrol services -- big teeth, small tail). I'm sure the ICDC were under US instruction to pay special attention to things that valuable, first educated instinct is that ICDC corruption (not that the vast majority weren't great) saw most of the shit go missing (I mean the portion after the collapse of the Iraqi army in the given city, if any -- literally can't do anything in disputed or Iraqi army territory where the looters realized the regime is too busy to stop them.
Plus even if you could do that, would you want to? Foreign occupying troops arresting and jailing people even for little things, per their own internal policy (since crimes, punishments, and due process and other rights are at in-between stages, post ba'athist law but pre-constitution)? Sounds like nightmare fuel for the apolitical but paranoid (including, 'hey Iraqis aren't guarding or allowed in the museum so they're pilfering super-valuables like the old british empire') to start resisting in vague ways being ripe for organized insurgents to take over for free manpower. People tend to want community organizers and even poorly trained volunteer police in that situation over the jolly green giant who brought plenty of body bags.
I didn't realise how old this video is. But it's still relevant and hasn't lost anything.
But, just to add another layer of complexity to it
The underlying belly of the beast.
War creates chaos, and there is a ready black market, and you connected all the dots well.
But there is one aspect you didn't hit on, but, really, it is outside your discussion, even though it is deeply connected.
Corporations profit from war, and the resulting chaos helps hide the shifting of wealth. But war had to be created, so that's where the next layer comes in, you would need an entire video series to derive into the corporate connections between the Intel agencies and the background undermining of countries that leads to the conditions to start wars, and they leads to so many religious, ideological, ethical and geopolitical factors it's impossible to unravel, but to put it very simply, the rogue elements of the Intel agencies have enough means at their disposal to blackmail leaders of industry, countries, and even international organisations such as the UN, and the WHO, so the are the thugs for hire for those corporations that want to get around state "problems"
And the CIA did find both the Taliban and ISIS, as well as numerous other "terrorist" groups and have been proven to destabilise countries for corporations.
+1 Legal Kimchi points
Not a dig towards you as it would hve been wildly off context to mention, but it always annoys me how Sunni aniconism and Byzantine iconoclasm are depicted as totally unrelated. As if iconoclasm came out if nowhere and has nothing to do with other nearby religious traditions. Maybe im wrong, but I doubt it
I can see why people might see it this way but I dont see calling something "a state" lends it legitimacy in the sense of "I support this existing". When an organization takes control of territory and starts acting like a state they are one for practical purposes. It's just like the Confederacy while we debate on whether it was "actually a state" because it wasnt recognized as a country to the people under it it was a very real state with great power over them while it existed.
Same with corporations in our present day. As corporations become more powerful than "the state" its inevitable that at some point they will become "the state" for all practical purposes even if they deny being such as part of their strategy. This is already started happening in many places.
Private ownership of artifacts isn’t neccesarily a bad thing. I’d rather have important ancient artifacts in the hands of private owners than publicly available in very unstable nations that regularly destroys artifacts
Ohh this is rabbit hole 🕳 😊
I truly admire the dedication of creating long form content without necessarily seeing an immediate "reward" in terms of subscribers / monetization. Reminds me of old TH-cam, back when people actually had something they really needed to say and used the platform to do just so.
Needless to say that I am recommending this video to friends that are studying Sustainable Heritage Management. Keep it up man, thank you for your great work
You could have left out both sides of our political structure(both being not great), and this video would have been amazing
quite a deviation for a gaming channel, but still a good video.
us army personnel have stated when they were told to raid and steal from iraq museums, as well as to destroy other artifacts - they realized the corruption permeated that agency.