Wednesday, April 16, 2003
More on the “Americans are the New Mongols” Paradigm. Apparently some rare Korans which survived Hulegu’s sack of Baghdad in 1258 did not make the cut this time. See Now Free to Protest, Iraqis Complain About Americans, which says in part: “This morning, the ashes were still smoldering at the Ministry for Religious Affairs, where a building housing thousands of Korans, many of them illuminated and hand written, several a thousand years old, had been burned to a charred shell. It was another severe blow to Iraq's 10,000 years of cultural history, along with the looting of the National Museum and the burning of the National Library, in which countless priceless artifacts and books were lost. ‘When Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258, these books survived,’ said Abdel Karim Anwar Obeid, 42, the ministry's general manager for administration. 'And now they didn't survive. You can't put a price on this loss. If you talk to any intellectual Muslims in the world, they are crying right now over this.'"
Iraqi Wifes to Iraqi Husbands: “Sorry Honey, but your looting is giving me a headache.” According to Baghdad Looters Returning Swag, “Some people are surrendering the booty they took in the Dura district of Baghdad, perhaps in response to a rumored edict by a Muslim cleric forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with looter husbands.” (Inexcusably, the Wall Street Journal ran this story under the headline Surrendering the Booty [subscription may be required].)
Well, I guess it was only a matter of time: Mongolia Has First Suspected SARS Cases. I knew something was wrong when I went out shopping at two o'clock this afternoon. At least half the people in the street had on faces masks. It's springtime in Mongolia, when there are often terrible dust storms and people often wear face masks, but there was no wind and no dust today. I stopped at the book store in the Zanabazar Museum and the woman there said that an announcement had been given on the radio that at least five Killer Virus cases were suspected but not confirmed. Then I went to the Austrian coffee shop just around the corner and found all the girls working there in face masks. They too had heard the warnings on the radio. So now what . . . ?
City of New York to Mongolia: "Pay Up or Get Out!". Apparently the government of Mongolia has not been paying its property taxes in New York. "The city is seeking $16.4 million from India for 235 East 43rd Street, which the city says was used for living quarters for people other than the head of India's mission or consulate. A similar claim is made against Mongolia for $2.1 million in taxes for a building at 6 East 77th Street," according to the NY Times.
