Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder

[Xanth]

Over at the UK Guardian today was an article with the above title.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/aug/24/razing-palmyra-mass-murder-isis

I was a bit confused because the article seemed to be suggesting that a building was more important than a number of people's lives. I was even more surprised that the majority of the comments appeared to be in favour of buildings rather than people.

My opinion is that there's something fundamentally distasteful about how the article was being pitched, and wondered if others on here agreed or disagreed?

[Selkie]

Over at the UK Guardian today was an article with the above title.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/aug/24/razing-palmyra-mass-murder-isis

I was a bit confused because the article seemed to be suggesting that a building was more important than a number of people's lives. I was even more surprised that the majority of the comments appeared to be in favour of buildings rather than people.

My opinion is that there's something fundamentally distasteful about how the article was being pitched, and wondered if others on here agreed or disagreed?

I understood him up until the last paragraph,


I’m not suggesting that we should prioritise the preservation of artefacts over the saving of human lives. If I had to choose, I’m sure I’d pull a person from a burning building before a Picasso. But that does not mean to care about the destruction of our heritage is to care about things more than we do people. Rather, it is to care about people as more than just biological things.


(my emphasis)

I think there is an editorial error there, which I have emphasized in bold. It looks to me like the editor should have told the author to cut either the sentence I have underlined or the sentence I have highlighted in blue. Including them both renders the paragraph nonsensical, and is a double negative, I think.

[Cidersomerset]

I did see the initial report yesterday , it makes no sense for IS to do
these atrocities/stunts for any sort of public or international support.
Yes the standard report is its usually for this or that religious reason etc.

It would make a lot of sense to gain world and public support to
create a coalition to send in ground troops to attack them and
also remove President Assad and the Syrian regime....


http://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/get-attachment-5352-587x366.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-oYJPLW0AAGCzA.jpg


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Destruction of Palmyra's Baalshamin temple 'a war crime'

7 hours ago

Temple of Baal Shamin

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/102E2/production/_85147266_elizabethroberts1.jpg
The Baalshamin temple is dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and fertilising rains


The destruction of Palmyra's ancient temple of Baalshamin is
a war crime, the UN's cultural agency has said.Syrian officials
and activists reported on Sunday that Islamic State (IS)
militants had blown up the temple.In a statement, Unesco said
it was "an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity".

IS took control of Palmyra in May, sparking fears for the site,
considered one of the ancient world's most important cultural centres.

Read More...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34043676

[Cidersomerset]

Another article from todays headline page that is possibly related and shows Assad
is not crumbling yet. The Israeli jet is reported to have been shot down on Friday
21 Aug . This is a serious threat to the Israeli and others planes. So ' false flag' ?
Bomb the building by their operatives , so as to gain world/UN support for attacking
ISIS direct and then spill over onto Syria.......

That makes more sense ?? Or it could all be just coincidence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Syria Shoots Down Israeli Warplane F-16 Bomber, Using Russian S-300 Air Defense System

By David Icke on 24th August 2015 War and Terror

http://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1014740843.jpg

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GLOBAL RESEARCH........

Syria Shoots Down Israeli Warplane F-16 Bomber, Using Russian S-300 Air Defense System
By Ziad Fadel

Global Research, August 23, 2015
Syrian Perspective


‘The shooting down of an Israeli warplane by Syria has not been reported by Western
and Israeli media sources. According to Sputnik, on August 21, “the Israeli Air Force
resumed airstrikes on Western Syria, targeting a government army base at Khan Al-Sheih
in Damascus province and another in the al-Quneitra province after a six-hour halt in
attacks that followed their multiple air raids over the Golan Heights.”

Fars News Agency (FNA) also confirmed the Israeli attacks and the shooting down
of an Israeli fighter planeThe Syrian air defense system shot down an Israeli warplane
violating the Arab country’s air space.The Israeli fighter jet was targeted over the city
of Al-Quneitra on Friday.’

Read more: Syria Shoots Down Israeli Warplane F-16 Bomber, Using Russian S-300 Air Defense System

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-shoots-down-israeli-warplane-f-16-bomber-and-helicopters/5471009

[Ted]

The psychological value the PTB get from this type of act is huge. Just when everyone is numbed out over ISIS brutally killing innocent people, they hit 'em where it really hurts. People who could care less before will now be screaming for ISIS to be stopped before they destroy any more priceless antiquities. It's all part of the game.

[Carmody]

I Like that point raised about Israel.

Every time someone brings up the thought of Isis and so on (radicals, etc), ask them why.... if it is a serious issue of jihad against 'whitey', (I mean, pick one)..why is never a single rock thrown by them -- at Israel?

Then ask them if they think that ISIS is real or some black ops creation to provoke fear and strife in the middle east.

If it was a real threat, all guns would be pointed at and firing at Israel.

Yet, nothing.

Let them chew on that obvious but unnoticed stunningly critical point.

The middle east is being torn apart so you can have the TSA, police states, and fascism - at home.

At the same time... all your life, world, and privacy are being taken from you with this false threat boogie man.... at the same time...you've got better odds of being hit by two planes while walking to the bus stop --- than being hit by some gun nut, bombing, or some falsified jihadist.

Talk about a blind faced two'fer.

[Tesseract]

Yes, I agree it is distastefully pitched, and indeed the last paragraph does not make sense. There is scope for writing about the cultural tragedy of the loss of these ruins, even against the backdrop of war, but this article didn't quite come out right. If the person who wrote it was awake, they would have opened people's eyes more to the tragedy of humanity, not risked minimalising it.

I also have this to say.

People in the west, generally white and english speaking, very often have a flawed, by incompletion, perception of people from other cultures, especially people from the middle east. For these westerners, the people of Iraq and Syria are just not quite up to the same level of humanity as white english speaking people, and therefore they are not granted quite the same level of sympathy. Any westerner would always deny the charge, because its a subconscious mindset. To make my point, the horrific bombing campaigns against Iraq, and elsewhere, which amputated, decapitated and burned to death tens of thousands at a minimum, could never have happened if white westerners viewed these foreigners with the same degree of compassion that they have for themselves. This is true of the politicians who ordered the attacks, the pilots who dropped the bombs, and the public who never really held the guilty to account. The same public that has a perverse appetite for aerial bombing footage of Libyans and Iraqi military personnel, true heroes who died defending the sanctity of a stable and independent government. The hypocrisy is astounding. Our immoral governments and defense departments are happy and proud to publish their own murder videos, where you can even see the people being shot, good people being bombed and strafed to death. The deserve the same condemnation as ISIS.



When western people look at Syria or Iraq, they don't see human beings quite in the same way as they do when they look at the citizens of their own countries. Their ethnocentrist mindset does not allow them to ascribe a full quota of humanity to people from a different race and culture. It's perhaps not fully their fault, this is in part a product of tribal evolution, but therefore education is important in waking people from this state. So, for many westerners, the acceptance of murder and suffering abroad is higher. Because someone is an arab they think a beheading is somehow a congruous act. So, when it happens, there isn't the same level of outrage. This is true of violent acts in general, not just ISIS executions.



What has happened to both Syria and Libya is, entirely beyond words, a crime, a tragedy and a disgrace. The wester leaders and media point hysterically to ISIS as if they themselves are not to blame. The Syrian government asks for nothing more than for foreigners to stop supporting the Islamist fascists they are fighting. And another point, no one had the slightest problem with beheadings when it was the Libyan 'opposition' doing it in Libya. They were cheered on, in fact. There wasn't much of a problem with it in Syria either, until the production style videos came out and the embarrassment for the state department could not be avoided. At that point ISIS was conveniently separated from the collective 'syrian opposition'.

[Selkie]

Yes, I agree it is distastefully pitched, and indeed the last paragraph does not make sense. There is scope for writing about the cultural tragedy of the loss of these ruins, even against the backdrop of war, but this article didn't quite come out right. If the person who wrote it was awake, they would have opened people's eyes more to the tragedy of humanity, not risked minimalising it.

I also have this to say.

People in the west, generally white and english speaking, very often have a flawed, by incompletion, perception of people from other cultures, especially people from the middle east. For these westerners, the people of Iraq and Syria are just not quite up to the same level of humanity as white english speaking people, and therefore they are not granted quite the same level of sympathy. Any westerner would always deny the charge, because its a subconscious mindset. To make my point, the horrific bombing campaigns against Iraq, and elsewhere, which amputated, decapitated and burned to death tens of thousands at a minimum, could never have happened if white westerners viewed these foreigners with the same degree of compassion that they have for themselves. This is true of the politicians who ordered the attacks, the pilots who dropped the bombs, and the public who never really held the guilty to account. The same public that has a perverse appetite for aerial bombing footage of Libyans and Iraqi military personnel, true heroes who died defending the sanctity of a stable and independent government. The hypocrisy is astounding. Our immoral governments and defense departments are happy and proud to publish their own murder videos, where you can even see the people being shot, good people being bombed and strafed to death. The deserve the same condemnation as ISIS.



When western people look at Syria or Iraq, they don't see human beings quite in the same way as they do when they look at the citizens of their own countries. Their ethnocentrist mindset does not allow them to ascribe a full quota of humanity to people from a different race and culture. It's perhaps not fully their fault, this is in part a product of tribal evolution, but therefore education is important in waking people from this state. So, for many westerners, the acceptance of murder and suffering abroad is higher. Because someone is an arab they think a beheading is somehow a congruous act. So, when it happens, there isn't the same level of outrage. This is true of violent acts in general, not just ISIS executions.



What has happened to both Syria and Libya is, entirely beyond words, a crime, a tragedy and a disgrace. The wester leaders and media point hysterically to ISIS as if they themselves are not to blame. The Syrian government asks for nothing more than for foreigners to stop supporting the Islamist fascists they are fighting. And another point, no one had the slightest problem with beheadings when it was the Libyan 'opposition' doing it in Libya. They were cheered on, in fact. There wasn't much of a problem with it in Syria either, until the production style videos came out and the embarrassment for the state department could not be avoided. At that point ISIS was conveniently separated from the collective 'syrian opposition'.

I totally agree with you.

p.s. Just to be clear, in my first post, I meant that I understood what the author is saying. I did not mean that I agree with him.

[Selkie]

The psychological value the PTB get from this type of act is huge. Just when everyone is numbed out over ISIS brutally killing innocent people, they hit 'em where it really hurts. People who could care less before will now be screaming for ISIS to be stopped before they destroy any more priceless antiquities. It's all part of the game.

That is a really good point, Ted. The killing of innocent people is not a "global" concern, but the destruction of antiquities is.

[Cidersomerset]

http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.87.1/orb/4/img/bbc-blocks-dark.png

Palmyra's Temple of Bel 'still standing'


4 hours ago

From the section Middle East



A general view shows the Temple of Bel in the historical city of Palmyra 31 August 2015
http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1BEC/production/_85284170_99c060d0-f68b-4d46-b85c-0cbff9917dce.jpg
The Temple of Bel is considered the most important structure of its kind at the site



Palmyra's ancient Temple of Bel is still standing despite an attempt by
Islamic State (IS) militants to blow it up, Syria's antiquities chief has said.

Maamoun Abdulkarim confirmed there was a large explosion within its
perimeter but said the basic structure of the 2,000-year-old site was intact.

But the extent of the damage is unclear with witnesses unable to get close to the temple.

Initial reports said the site had been partially destroyed.

Mr Abdulkarim, head of the Syrian Department of Antiquities and Museums,
said "our information is provisional, but it indicates that any damage done
was partial, and the basic structure is still standing".


Read More...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34107395