La Croix

Source: frank.ardres.free.fr

Une passionnante exposition au Louvre confronte l'objectivité des découvertes archéologiques à la fécondité fabuleuse du mythe de Babylone


Il y a un paradoxe Babylone. Réputée dans l’antiquité pour être la plus splendide au monde, cette cité de briques n’est plus qu’un immense champ de ruines. Et pourtant, l’ancienne capitale de la Mésopotamie n’a cessé d’enflammer l’imaginaire des auteurs et des artistes.


C’est cette prospérité incroyable d’un mythe que le Musée du Louvre a choisi d’explorer en confrontant les rares vestiges archéologiques et documents écrits datant du faste de Babylone (entre le IIe et le Ier millénaire avant notre ère) avec le foisonnement de légendes auxquelles il a donné lieu.


Réalisée sans le concours de l’Irak en guerre et alors que le site est encore occupé par l’armée américaine, cette exposition – la première au monde – a bénéficié notamment des prêts du British Museum et des musées nationaux de Berlin, qui l’accueilleront ensuite.


À son apogée, elle s’étendait sur près de 1 000 hectares

Il faut se représenter la stupeur du voyageur de l’Antiquité arrivant aux portes de cette ville, bâtie sur un bras de l’Euphrate, à 90 kilomètres au sud de la Bagdad actuelle. À son apogée, sous le règne de Nabuchodonosor II (605-562), elle s’étendait sur près de 1 000 hectares, derrière trois rangées de colossales murailles dominées par une tour à étages, ou ziggourat, qui culmine à plus de 90 mètres.


Représentée par une maquette au Louvre, celle-ci était dédiée au souverain des dieux chaldéens : Mardouk. Pour l’atteindre, il fallait d’abord suivre la voie processionnelle et franchir l’écrasante porte d’Ishtar, avec ses 48 mètres de long, ses 25 mètres de haut et son décor de briques émaillées en bleu et or représentant des dragons cornus et des lions rugissants, dont certains, prêtés par Berlin, ont fait le voyage à Paris.


Mais on ne voit là que les quelques lambeaux d’une cité qui comportait à l’origine pas moins de huit portes, 43 temples et trois palais avec ces fameux jardins suspendus, restés parmi les « sept merveilles du monde », avec les murailles de Babylone et son pont.


C’est dire combien cette cité subjuguait tous ses visiteurs, y compris ses conquérants. Prenant la ville en 539, le Perse Cyrus le Grand en fit le joyau de son empire. Quant à Alexandre le Grand, entré dans Babylone en 331 av. J.-C., il fut tellement émerveillé qu’il tenta de la reconstruire avant de venir s’éteindre, en 323 av. J.-C., dans l’immense salle du trône de Nabuchodonosor.

Le Code d’Hammourabi, la monumentale stèle de basalte

L’aura de Babylone dans l’Antiquité ne se limitait d’ailleurs pas à son impressionnante architecture. Si les premiers vestiges de la grande cité, à partir du règne d’ Hammourabi (1792-1750 av. J.-C.), n’ont pu être fouillés en raison d’une élévation de la nappe phréatique, on a retrouvé dans tout le Proche-Orient de très nombreux écrits cunéiformes sur d’humbles tablettes d’argile témoignant de son rayonnement.


À commencer par le fameux Code d’Hammourabi, monumentale stèle de basalte détenue par le Louvre, dans lequel ce roi conquérant édicte les règles censées unifier l’administration de son nouvel empire, qu’il venait d’étendre sur tout le bassin mésopotamien, du golfe Persique jusqu’a la Djézireh.


« C’est avec lui que Babylone va s’affirmer comme le centre intellectuel de l’Orient à défaut d’en rester, toujours, le centre politique », souligne Béatrice André-Salvini, commissaire général de l’exposition. Inventé par les savants chaldéens, le système sexagésimal divisant le cercle en 360° et l’année en 12 mois se diffusera à tout l’Occident.


De même que certains des grands textes littéraires de ce royaume, tels l’épopée de Gilgamesh qui influença Homère ou le « récit de la Création » auquel a puisé la Bible. De nombreux thèmes comme celui du Déluge ou du désespoir de Job apparaissent ainsi directement empruntés à cette culture.

La Bible retournera comme un gant l’image de la cité idéale

Et pourtant, c’est la Bible qui retournera comme un gant l’image de cette cité idéale en faisant de « Babylone, la grande mère des prostituées et des abominations de la terre » (Apocalypse de Jean), en allusion peut-être aux hiérogamies (unions rituelles) qui accompagnaient le culte de la déesse Ishtar.


Derrière cet anathème, il y a bien sûr le souvenir cuisant de la double prise de Jérusalem (en 598 et 587 av. J.-C.) par Nabuchodonosor, suivie de la destruction du Temple et de la déportation des Hébreux qui participèrent à la construction de la « tour de Babel ».


Le cosmopolitisme de la ville issue du métissage de nombreux peuples (Sumériens, Akkadiens, puis Cananéens) suggérera la légende de sa confusion des langues. Et Babel deviendra dès lors dans l’imaginaire juif puis chrétien le symbole de l’orgueil démesuré des hommes cherchant à rivaliser avec Dieu, au prix d’un formidable contresens. Car, en réalité, la grande ziggourat n’était, pour les Chaldéens, que le piédestal permettant à la divinité de descendre auprès des hommes.


Du festin du dernier roi Balthazar au débauché Sardanapale (représenté par Delacroix) ou à la figure ambiguë de la reine Sémiramis (qui inspirera Voltaire, Rossini, Degas…), de nombreuses figures plus ou moins légendaires ne cesseront ainsi de se propager autour de Babylone, comme le montre la deuxième partie de l’exposition, la plus visuelle grâce à la richesse de ses représentations imaginaires (la ville ne sera réellement fouillée qu’en 1899). Symbole de destructions- (re)constructions, « la cité mythique resurgit à chaque période de troubles », note Sébastien Allard, commissaire associé.


Au moment de la Réforme, par exemple, Dürer grave La Prostituée de Babylone pour mieux dénoncer la Rome papale. Breughel peint une « Petite » Tour de Babel, qui s’inspire du Colisée. Après la révolution industrielle, inquiets de ses effets pervers, certains réformateurs comme le peintre et ingénieur John Martin représentent Babylone avec un gigantisme dramatisé. Griffith, reconstituant, d’après les premières découvertes archéologiques, l’incendie de la ville dans son film Intolérance en 1916, traduira un même climat angoissé. Et certaines photos de l’attentat du 11 septembre 2001 contre les Twin Towers reprendront le cadrage de la Tour de Breughel, réactivant une fois encore le fantasme de Babylone.

Sabine GIGNOUX http://www.la-croix.com/article/index.jsp?docId=2331769&rubId=5548#

March 22 / 23, 2008

Worth the Sacrifice?

Bush Blisters the Truth on Iraq

By Ralph NADER

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Bush's illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the Fabricator-in-Chief made a speech at the Pentagon, whose muzzled army chiefs had opposed his costly, ruinous adventure from the start for strategic, tactical and logistical reasons.

Photo: Joëlle Pénochet

As benefits the dictatorial monarch of yesteryear, evicted by America's first patriots, this modern-day King George blistered the truth, somersaulted the facts and declared that a "strategic victory" in Iraq is near. He called the war "a just and noble cause." Sugarcoating the terrible, impoverished state of daily life in Iraq, he acknowledged "the high cost in lives and treasure," but said the recent situation in Iraq made it all worthwhile. "Worth the sacrifice" is how he put it often in previous statements.

At the same time, his V.P. his Prince Regent, Dick Cheney was having this exchange with ABC's Martha Raddatz:

Raddatz: "Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives."

Cheney: "So?"

Raddatz: "So ­ you don't care what the American people think?"

Cheney: "No," who then inaccurately wrapped Abraham Lincoln's stand during the Civil War around his relentless illegal warmongering in Iraq.

In an article called "Defining Victory Downward: No, the surge is not a success," columnist Michael Kinsley exposed the fatuous standards of comparison used by Bush and took his readers to standards back in 2003. Kinsley observed how Bush spouts success against conflicts and conditions that never existed before March 2003. There were no Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, no large scale sectarian carnage. There were modicum rudimentary public facilities and necessities, notwithstanding severe Clinton-Bush propelled economic sanctions, under dictator Saddam Hussein, instead of a devastated, riven nation of 4 million refugees and violent street anarchy.

At the same time that the rancidly redundant fictionalizations of reality in Iraq by Bush and Cheney were once again receiving front page attention at the New York Times and the Washington Post, protests on the downtown streets of Washington, D.C. and in scores of cities and communities around the country received subdued short articles deep inside these newspapers. Both remarked on the smaller turnout of marchers compared to the large demonstrations in 2003.

This decline should not be surprising. Most people are trying to communicate their concerns, and their repeatedly accurate warnings about the impacts of this war of aggression to a wider audience. But the mainstream media, often hardly working on weekends, never gave these outpourings the attention they deserved (even though American public opinion was behind their call to end the war-occupation and said that the war was not worth the cost to America in lives and dollars).

Fortunately, along came a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, with a new detailed book titled "The Three Trillion Dollar War ," (W.W. Norton) to inform the American people just how right they are about the long term cost of Bush's messianic reckless pursuit launched on a platform of lies, distortions and cover-ups.

The twisted defiance of Bush, the cowardliness of the majority Democrats in Congress and the frustration and powerlessness felt by sensitive Americans who see no light at the end of the Iraq tunnel leaves little room for citizens to gain control of their runaway government.

There is a possible way to turn the tide in favor of ending this illusion of "victory" and the occupation that breeds its own opposition in Iraq.

Unlike before or during any other war in our nation's history, hundreds of former high military, national security-intelligence and diplomatic officials have spoken, written, testified and some even marched against Bush's tragic folly ­ before and after the March 2003 invasion.

These retired public servants include generals and anti-terrorism specialists who worked inside the Bush Administration. Taken as a whole, were they to aggregate their standing and influence before the American people by banding together as a group, their cumulative impact on Congress, on galvanizing and focusing public opinion during this election year could well turn this deteriorating situation around.

These patriotic Americans, with their experience in battles, conflicts and geopolitical tensions, coupled with their desire to wage peace for a change in Washington's policies, could be the catalyst that spells the difference. Compared with Bush and Cheney, successful draft-dodgers during their Pro-Vietnam war past, they make for quite a credible contrast.

Will they mobilize themselves for the common good and provide the new dynamic needed?

Time will tell.

Internationalnews

La 2e vidéo ayant été supprimée(???) , nous la remplaçons par celle-ci:

Barack Obama on Iraq Date: 25/04/2007 Durée: 3:02

Photo: blogsouthwest.com

BAQUBA, Mar 10 (IPS) - Iraq's children have been more gravely affected by the U.S. occupation than any other segment of the population.

The United Nations estimated that half a million Iraqi children died during more than 12 years of economic sanctions that preceded the U.S. invasion of March 2003, primarily as a result of malnutrition and disease.


But childhood malnutrition in Iraq has increased 9 percent since then, according to an Oxfam International report released last July.


A report from the non-governmental relief organisation Save the Children shows Iraq continues to have the highest mortality for children under five. Since the first Gulf War, this has increased 150 percent. It is estimated that one in eight children in Iraq dies before the fifth birthday: 122,000 children died in 2005 alone. Iraq has a population of about 25 million.


According to a UN Children's Fund report released this month, "at least two million Iraqi children lack adequate nutrition, according to the World Food Programme assessment of food insecurity in 2006, and face a range of other threats including interrupted education, lack of immunisation services and diarrhoea diseases."


IPS interviewed three children from different districts of Baquba, the capital city of Iraq's volatile Diyala province, 40 km northeast of Baghdad.


Firas Muhsin is seven, and lives in Baquba with his mother. His father was killed two years ago by militants who shot him in his shop.


Firas attends school four hours every day near his house. On rare occasions he gets to play with neighbours' children, but always under the eyes of his mother.


Firas is allowed to move no more than ten metres from the house; his mother is afraid of strangers. Kidnapping of Iraqi children is common now, and many are believed to have been sold as child labourers or as sex workers.


Iraqi officials and aid workers have recently expressed concern over the alarming rate at which children are disappearing countrywide in Iraq's unstable environment.


Omar Khalif is vice-president of the Iraqi Families Association (IFA), an NGO established in 2004 to register cases of the missing and trafficked. He told reporters in January that on average at least two Iraqi children are sold by their parents every week. In addition, another four are reported missing every week.


"The numbers are alarming," Khalif said. "There is an increase of 20 percent in the reported cases of missing children over a year."


Firas spends hours each day sitting at the door looking at people. The door is his only outlet. In the afternoon, his mother calls him inside to do his homework. After dinner, his big hope is to watch cartoons -- if there is electricity from their private generator.


The mother faces a shortage of kerosene needed just for heating. "My children feel cold and I cannot afford kerosene," she told IPS.


Many children Firas's age do not get to school at all. According to the UN, 17 percent of Iraqi children are permanently out of primary school, and an estimated 220,000 more are missing school because they and their families have been displaced. That adds up to 760,000 children out of primary school in 2006.


These are in-country figures, and do not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children and youth whose education is interrupted or ended because their families have fled to other countries. UNHCR estimates that at least 2.25 million Iraqis have fled their country.


Qusay Ameen is five, and lives with his mother, father, two sisters and a brother. His father was a sergeant in the former military, and is now unemployed. He receives a monthly pension of 110 dollars. He tries to support the family by selling cigarettes on the roadside. Qusay's mother is a housekeeper. Qusay hopes to begin school next year when he turns six.


After breakfast, always something simple like fried tomato with bread, Qusay wants to play, but he has nothing to play with but a small broken plastic car his brother found near the neighbour's door. He spends most of the morning playing with this car. He seems happiest when he gets to visit his neighbour's house, because they have a swing in the garden.


Like most Iraqi children now, Qusay has grown used to being in need. He rarely gets sweets, or new clothes.


The family house is incredibly small -- one bedroom and a place used as both kitchen and bathroom. Everyone sleeps in one room, which is extremely cold through the winter months. There are not enough beds or covering, and everyone has to sleep close together for warmth.


The house has few basic necessities, and of course no television or useful household appliances. There is a small kerosene cooker used for both cooking and heating.


According to the UN Children's Fund, only 40 percent of children nationwide have access to safe drinking water, and only 20 percent of people outside Baghdad have a working sewerage service. About 75,000 children are among families living in temporary shelters.


Ali Mahmood, 6, has lived with his uncle in Baquba after his parents were killed by a mortar explosion two years ago in random shelling by militants. Next year he will join primary school near his uncle's house.


Ali's days are alike, and quiet. His only friends are his uncle's children. When they go to school, he simply spends his time alone. It does seem the uncle's family is not able to look after him as well as his own might have. His uncle Thamir is doing his best, but life is difficult, and Thamir has responsibility for a big family.


Ali is deprived of just about everything in childhood; he has no place to play, or things to play with. And he has nobody to think of his future.


Photo: Commondreams


And already, he has responsibilities waiting; he has been told he must take care of his younger brother when he grows up.


Firas, Qusay and Ali are all children, but none the way children should be.


(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East) (END/2008)

http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=41524