that’s right on time It’s Tricky!
I taped a bit of this english radio documentary that I mentioned back here. This is a small quote from it:
bq. “In the prelude to the Gulf War it was easy to think that Iraq had only just been invented. That there was nothing much to say about it as a country. That there was nothing much there to bomb. In fact, the history being arranged for us, was played out where all history began. For while Europe was populated with stone-age tribes, the people of Mesopotamia were living in towns and those towns had libraries. The city of Babylon flourished for 2000 years, changing hands as rival empires fought over trade routes, riches, land. It was here a legal code was written – that the strong might not oppress the weak. Twenty centuries before the birth of christ these laws had distinguished justice from revenge.
Centuries later another great city was built, capital of the arab empire and its new religion, Islam. Rhymed poetry, geometry, our number system – all come from Bagdad. Here, in europe’s dark age, arab scholars calulated the circumference of the earth, six centuries later the [christian] church conceded it was not flat.”
It’s pretty sad to see the city being trashed, and its people humiliated.
To take a big step back from it all, and get a bit flippant too– there’s been some aspects of the invasion that remind me a lot games of Civilisation or freeCiv. Civil disorder alway happens when you take over a city – what I’d do was pump some cash straight into it to get the temple/cathedral rebuilt immediately, which would restore order. That doesn’t seem to be happening in real life.
I finished off a long assignment earlier than expected yesterday and then had a (too long) nap. Later on, there was bugger all on telly and i didn’t have the beans to concentrate on doing anything productive on here, so I had a meditate for an hour — all of which contributed to very little sleep being had last night, and accordingly, me feeling zombified all day today.
Another side-effect of all this swotting is these ridiculously long and precarious sentences showing up. Sorry.
Jon found a really neat colour chooser.
name: Jay
email:
url: www.mowabi.com/
ip: 205.191.171.239
date: 2003-04-15-00-12
A friend and I were discussing Civilization in comparison to the war recently too.. on reflection, I think it’s a little insulting to the Iraqi people to trivialise it so much.
Edit Comment / Delete Comment Block IP 205.191.171.239 / Block IP range 205.191.171.*
name: yak sox
email:
url: www.spouting.net
ip: 203.29.131.4
date: 2003-04-15-09-41
For sure, I’ve thought about mentioning the comparrison here several times before, but didn’t because it’s just too easy for me to – here in comfortable, non-catastrophic southern-australia. I don’t know what it’s like to sit through a night of listening to/feeling my town being bombed.