The Skeptic الشكاك

470 Jazz-Age Cairo

I sometimes think I was born in the wrong time:

412 Update from Whale Valley

More on the story that European diplomats seriously damaged a 40 million-year-old whale fossil in Egypt’s Western Desert. It was the Belgians. The AP got their side of the story, too:

Egypt: Belgian Diplomats Damaged Fossils
By SALAH NASRAWI
The Associated Press
Monday, August 27, 2007; 9:58 AM

CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian authorities have accused Belgian diplomats of damaging a 40 million-year-old whale fossil when they allegedly drove over the remains in a protected desert area, an official said Monday. Belgian officials denied any damage was done.

Mohamed Ibrahim, an official in the Ministry of Environment, said the diplomats in four-wheel-drive vehicles ran over the fossil in July after ignoring signs warning visitors not to drive in the Wadi el-Hitan, or Valley of the Whales, protected area and UNESCO World Heritage site located about 93 miles outside of Cairo.

The Belgian Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Cairo denied the vehicles caused any damage to the fossil. Foreign Ministry spokesman Marc Michielsen said the two diplomatic-plated all-terrain vehicles were in the area but “did not leave the road.”

“They were not aware that the area was a protected area,” Michielsen said. “It seems the area was not cordoned off, and no notice or guards were present.”

Egyptian and Belgian authorities both said the incident took place in July. It was unclear why Egyptian officials waited until now to make the allegations.

Michielsen said Egyptian authorities sent a letter to Belgian authorities in mid-July, which Belgian authorities answered Aug. 5 by saying the diplomats did not damage any fossils.

“Since then we have not received any reaction,” Michielsen said.

Ibrahim, who works in the Environmental Ministry’s Natural Protected Zones office, said the Egyptian prosecutor’s office has estimated the damage at $325,000 and has demanded Belgium pay that amount in compensation.

“The financial value doesn’t really matter. What matters is the historical value,” he said.

Wadi el-Hitan contains fossils of the extinct suborder of whales, the archaeoceti, that date back about 40 million years. UNESCO says the fossils show the evolution of the whale from a land-based mammal to an ocean-based one.

UNESCO declared the site, discovered in 1936, a World Heritage site in 2005.

___

Associated Press Writer Constant Brand in Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this report.

408 European Diplomats Destroy Egyptian UNESCO Site

Whoreson impudent embossed rascals! Spleeny onion-eyed boar-pigs! Lumpish doghearted pignuts! Spleeny beetle-headed malt-worms! Pribbling lily-livered jolt-heads!

Cairo – European diplomats in four-wheel-drive cars have caused extensive damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday.

“Whale Valley officials have informed the authorities that people from two diplomatic vehicles destroyed the fossil,” the source told reporters after the destruction was discovered 150km south of Cairo.

Two cars drove into the protected area on Friday and then refused to stop when asked to do so by wardens who nevertheless obtained the vehicles’ registration numbers which the source said were from “a European country”.

“The damage is more than ten million dollars,” the source said.

The site, known as Wadi Hitan (Whale Valley), was home to whales around 40 million years ago when the area was still under water. It is a Unesco World Heritage site and home to hundreds of of whale fossils. – Sapa-AFP

(Thanks Stefan)

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Happy 23rd of July.

(Thanks, M)

378 Weekend Miscellany

Good quotes recently in the news:
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates quotes G. Behn and tells a Marine Corps dinner about the “pleasure” of returning to Washington, “where there are so many lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.”

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” —Frédéric Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy (1848), quoted in a Wall Street Journal commentary by Bob McTeer.

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My favorite WWII postal acronyms:
B.U.R.M.A. Be Upstairs Ready My Angel
N.O.R.W.I.C.H. (K)nickers Off Ready When I Come Home

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My favorite deaths of Burmese kings:
Theinhko: Killed by a farmer whose cucumbers he ate without permission (931 AD). Theinko’s queen, fearing civil disorder, smuggled the farmer into the royal palace and dressed him in royal robes. He was proclaimed King Nyaung-u Sawrhan, and was known as the “Cucumber King.” He later transformed his cucumber plantation into a spacious and pleasant royal garden.

Anawrahta: Gored to death by a buffalo during a military campaign (1077).

Tabinshweti: Beheaded by his chamberlains while searching for a fictitious white elephant (1551). Good to pull out the next time someone refers to any “white elephant” project.

And, my favorite, Nandabayin: Laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that Venice was a free state without a king (1599).

362 Old Letters to New Princes

Since I’m now officially on leave from my job, I’m bringing the blog back… at least until I start another contract.

First, happy birthday (and Bastille Day) to Hossam. Second, welcome to Abu Muqawama and to Conflictblotter, two excellent new (well, in the past seven months) blogs on the Middle East by good friends who once lived in Cairo and Baghdad. Abu Muqawama has moved on to Morocco (smart man). Conflictblotter has moved on to Gaza, Jerusalem, and now (smart man) a Greek Island.

***
Now that I’m free again, I have time to read. Books and stuff. A few interesting scraps for today:

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“The best form of jihad is a word of truth to a tyrannical ruler.” (Hadith no. 4011 from the Sunan Ibn Majah)

And Abu Bakr‘s great inaugural address:

“Oh people, I have been entrusted with authority over you, but I am not the best of you. Help me if I am right and correct me if I am wrong.” (recounted by Abd al-Malik Ibn Hashim in his Sirah al-Nabawiyya)

I too want my rulers to be that modest.

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MP3

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