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feelgood Americans
Posted by parhad (Guest) - Sunday, April 4 2004, 11:34:55 (EDT)
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this article is by way of explaining how to get your hands on your neighbors possessions and be a good duy at the same time..like the missonaries bringing god and food to people they themselves starved who had no need of their god OR their food. This is deceit and murder posing as concern and conservation...Iraqis were doing fine on their own...there have been all sorts of rough spots in American history too..nothing but nothing justifies attacking and killing people over their rough spots or to to preserve their artifcts...I`d save a child`s life before saving ANY fucking piece of stone from the past..I don`t care HOW precious a piece of stone it was...I weep for the dead children of today...not the stones of 4000 years ago...with these sorts of values we`ll have dead Iraqis and great museums...which is exactly what the Brits started doing long ago when they too looted the countries of the people they attacked and "pacified"...only they didn`t call it looting..they called it preserving...like they don`t call themselves Terrorists but armies.

Who mourns Nineveh?" *PIC*

Posted By: Sahdina (CPE0010a72637a7-CM.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com)
Date: Sunday, 4 April 2004, at 7:47 a.m.

The Treasure Hunter

John Russell is a real-life Indiana Jones, out to protect Iraq's ancient artifacts from looters.

By Andrew Lawler, 4/4/2004

Who mourns Nineveh? The ancient Israelites celebrated the destruction of Assyria's capital city more than 2,500 years ago, and then what still remained was left vulnerable to vandals and thieves under the rule of Saddam Hussein and during the US invasion of Iraq. But John Russell, a Boston archeologist and art historian who has shed tears for Mesopotamia's great, threatened legacy, is doing something to save it.

Thanks to his efforts, the massive stone friezes of Assyrian warriors and kings at Nineveh are now protected from robbers and the elements by guards and corrugated-metal awnings. Russell raised $17,000 last year for this initiative before traveling to Iraq. He toted the cash around Baghdad for a month and then made an unescorted trip through the dangerous Sunni triangle from Baghdad to Mosul, across the river from the ancient city of Nineveh, where he used the money to engineer the safeguards.

His reward came in late February, when photos showing the newly secured site arrived in his ornate office in what had been Hussein's main palace along the banks of the Tigris River, where Russell has served since September as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture. "The pictures choked me up," he says. "I've longed for 14 years to see that view." Such emotion is not unusual for Russell. A year ago, distraught over the US failure to control looting at Baghdad's famed Iraq Museum as well as at libraries and universities during the takeover of the Iraqi capital, he teared up during media interviews. "I was the weeping archeologist," he says without apology.

Looking at him, you wouldn't think the 50-year-old Russell is a man to risk danger in a combat zone or express strong feelings on national television. With his worn blue blazer, thick glasses, and slight figure, he seems more Woody Allen than Harrison Ford. But his passion for the ancient Middle East propels him into unusual situations. "I spend a lot of time in countries at war or otherwise stricken," he says. During the last six months, he has struggled to help Iraqis halt looting at ancient sites, renovate shattered cultural institutions, and reinvigorate demoralized staffs.

"His field experience and his knowledge of the country and people made him the natural choice" for the job, says Irene Winter, a Harvard University art historian and mentor to Russell. "He's a person of moral fiber who puts his scholarship where his integrity is."

It is a long way from Huntington Avenue and the Massachusetts College of Art, where Russell has taught since 1998. And it is even farther from the small Missouri town of Rolla where he grew up. He caught the Mesopotamia bug at Washington University in St. Louis, and 15 years later, he was digging at Nineveh.

Fortuitously, before the 1991 Gulf War, he made the first careful record of the remaining stone friezes in the home of King Sennacherib, dubbed grandly by that ancient monarch as "The Palace Without Rival." Scholarly interest turned into a practical asset in the chaos following the Gulf War. Iraq was closed to foreigners, looting was rampant, and archeological sites became supermarkets for antiquity collectors abroad. With his documentation, Russell was able to sound the alarm when pieces that clearly came from Sennacherib's palace showed up outside Iraq. At least one was returned as a result.

Wandering the ruins of Nineveh in 2001 for the first time in a decade with his Iraqi colleagues, Russell saw with dismay the smashed remnants of vandalized friezes. Though his feelings about last year's US invasion of Iraq were mixed, he jumped at the opportunity to fix the damage from both the war and Hussein's neglect, isolation, and oppression.

It is a job other American archeologists, reluctant to partner with the US government and loathe to take time from their research, shied away from and for which Russell is especially well suited. Much of his day-to-day work in Iraq is bureaucratic drudgery, such as negotiating contracts to revamp the devastated national museum. But by the time he leaves this month, Russell intends to have the museum ready to reopen, thanks to a $1.7 million grant from the US State Department. And the atmosphere for the staff is vastly changed. Before the US invasion, he says, museum personnel put themselves in danger speaking their minds. Now, things are opening up. Asked how he feels about working for the US government, he retorts: "I'm working for the Iraqi government -- that's why I took this job."

The past months have mellowed his criticism of the United States' actions during the early days of the invasion. Initial reports that all of the Iraq Museum's artifacts were stolen proved exaggerated, though some 13,000 items that vanished in the days immediately following the American assault on Baghdad remain missing. "It is fair to say the US military could have done more," he says, "but I can't pretend to know what should have been done."

His focus, odd for an archeologist, is the future. "Iraq is really transforming, and that's symbolized by the museum, the symphony, the library," he says. That optimism is tempered by the lower priority given cultural heritage in an often chaotic country whose basic infrastructure and evolving government need urgent attention. And violence is ever-present. Museum staff members have been killed or injured by gunfire or in the free-for-all of Iraq's roads. "Anytime you go out," he says, "you could get killed."

Russell does say there are perks -- such as avoiding a New England winter and enjoying the Southern-fried chicken and grilled-cheese sandwiches available in the palace canteen. But what he clearly relishes is the chance to help preserve the past: "How often do you get a chance to be part of history and feel you are making a difference?"

Andrew Lawler, Boston correspondent for Science Magazine, has traveled several times to Iraq to cover archeological matters.



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