Headline August 17, 2017/ ''' *CULTURECIDE DESTRUCTION CURSECIDE'''

''' *CULTURECIDE DESTRUCTION 

CURSECIDE '''

GOVERNOR  *GOOGLE*  -ever the master, in many, many ways,  has always delighted  the  Students and the World-

With  unbelievable caring and beautiful gestures, like the doodle that Google came up with to pay tribute to  one of the greatest artist of the world:

Sadequain  [1930  -1987]. 

It was  Sadequain, who created beauty, genius and art in Proud Pakistan and then had this country put on the world map when Pakistan was just two decades old.

Art critics and commentators have have used many epithets to describe his genius, and many have claimed close associations with him; All of them would be right. All of them would be wrong..  

Be that it may but Google's Sadequain Doodle has made art lovers, students, professors and teachers feel very proud. The whole world over. The World Students Society thanks Google for this splendid gesture.

A Thing of Beauty is a  Joy Forever and in the flow of history,  The World Students Society also remembers and pays its respects to the great Master Sadequain, but in a growing sense of pain as we move to understand  ...

THE DESTRUCTION OF  AL-NURI MOSQUE  IN MOSUL  is yet again, another sad and  horrible example of   ..........  *cultureside*

Over the years, Robert Fisk, has closely watched and documented the pains of History's windshears. and like many before him, like me--. But I stop and thank this great researcher and writer with great honor.........

Has lost count of the priceless treasures of  art and antiquity which, you may have seen with your own very eyes.........and which now lie in shattered pieces,  

Fourteen years ago, racing across Mosul to see the building US forces had just  shot dead  the sons of  Saddam Hussein, I glimpsed  the  ''hunchback'' minaret of the  12th century  Al-Nuri Mosque-

Looming over the old city, built by Nur-al-Din Mahmoud Zangi, an Arab hero who united the Arabs against the Crusaders.

Gone, my lord and ladies, in just a few seconds, scarcely some weeks ago. We blamed the militant Islamic State group and it blamed a US air strike.

Back in 2012, I ran past the 12th century minaret of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo, pounding down the road towards the ancient Citadel as bullets buzzed up the streets.

Within a year, the minaret was dust.  We blamed the Syrian government for shelling it.  The Syrians blamed  al-Nusrah/Al Qaeda  ''terrorists'' . All over Aleppo, they felt the ground tremble as the minaret fell.

Many times in the 1980s I walked through the Roman ruins of Palmyra, visited the Temple of Bel, gazed at the triumphal arch and walked on the theater stage.

When I returned in  2010 after the  Syrian army had driven IS from the ancient city,  the arch had been destroyed with explosives and the temple was reduced to  shards of stone, most of them only two or three inches in length.

The theater was undamaged though I noticed the end of a noose looped around a Roman column. This was IS's place of  execution.

Then IS returned and recaptured Palmyra and this time they blew up the very center of the theater.

After the war broke out in Bosnia, I walked across the shinning stones at Sinan's  16th Ottoman bridge at Mostar. Within months, that which had stood for 427 years collapsed into the Neretya river under a salvo of Croation artillery shells.

It was exactly  3.27 pm on Nov 9,  1993. I know the time because I still have videotape of the destruction.

I used to  freeze-frame  the tape and press the rewind button and rebuild the bridge, the spray falling back into the river, the old-Turkish stones rising mystically upwards to recognize themselves in their magical span above the river.

Its loss was mourned by the Bosnian Muslims    -whose ancient mosques were crumbling under Serb gunfire -as the absence of the Mosul minaret is mourned by Iraqis.

The Yugoslav novelist Ivo Andric, in The Bridge on the Drina   -surely one of the greatest  European novels ever written  -describes how-

''Men learned from the angels of God how to build bridges, and therefore, after fountains, the greatest blessings is to build a bridge and the sin to interfere with it..,,,.'' 

But we are used to   ''the greatest sin''.

'''Culturecide''..........   is the destruction of libraries, graveyards, cathedrals, mosques    -became a feature of the Bosnian war.

In Kosovo in 1999, the Christian Serbs destroyed ancient mosques.

Then the  Kosovar Muslims destroyed most of the Serb churches in the province......... I saw many, many of them, before and after their immolation. 

And ''the greatest sin'' has, of course, a hundred thousand precedents.

Who now remembers  the  5th century  statutes of Buddha in Bamiyan, blasted with explosives for 25 days by the Taliban in 2001 until they were rubble.

The Honor and Serving of the latest  Operational Research  on ways and practices of the world continues.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers if the world.   See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!   -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' History & History '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless