Reply to Ton Cremers (Museum Security List)

I must say I was astounded to see just now that what I thought was an earlier private message from Ton Cremers to me has been published by him on the Museum Security List, (!) with a final comment that he will not accept any more posts to the thread started on this list by coin dealer Dave Welsh called "Barford the Liar?". While that is good to hear (the thread quite obviously should not have been started on a moderated list in the first place), its author leaves the reader with the impression that I am here the aggressor which is not how I see it.

I suspect that the key to what developed into an extremely unpleasant off-list exchange with the list owner of MSN (which I now find out he partly carried over onto the list itself) is the following passage:

I really get sick and tired of these attacks on the way I moderate this list. Luckily these attacks are very rare and in general limited to the Iraq war and damage to cultural property (these always lead to hate mail from the USA), and messages about damage to antiquities in Palestina (guess which lobby will complain in that case..). Again: in the past 14 years I have send some 30.000 (!!) messages to the list, and in my view less than a handful in hindsight should not have been send. I am no longer convinced that the "Barford the liar?" message belongs to that handful. I deserve a lot more consideration as moderator than I do get in this unpleasant coins thread. This also
goes voor [***]'s off list message yesterday, including all CC's, of which you were one.

well, first of all I really do wonder at the mentality that sees the messages he received about this affair (some of which were CCd to me and are pretty innocuous) as "attacks". I am sure we all sympathise with the list-owner's plight. Anyone who has come up against the unpleasant tactics of the metal-detecting and artefact collecting lobby will be aware of the difficulties faced by those that decide to stand their ground in these matters. Moderating any discussion list is never a pleasant or rewarding task, and one on such a topic can be counted on to provide additional problems.

I think this however has a dimension which goes beyond "wasting time on easily hurt ego's (sic)". Ton Cremers was a pioneer, his Museum Security Network in the 1990s was one of the few places which collated information from all over the Web on not just museum security but also antiquity thefts and related issues. We all owe the MSN a great debt. Nevertheless, times have moved on from the 1990s and some of the discussion has now moved to another format and into additional hands and areas. I am one of those who feel it is not enough to merely repost for (often desultory) discussion news posts taken from other media. Very rarely has a journalist writing a piece stressed the elements of a story that in my opinion need stressing. In this blog therefore I rarely simply cut and paste a news item as my post, which is how older more traditional list servers like MSN (and on the other side Welsh's Unidroit-L) work. Far more effort (and time) goes into these blogged texts than mere cut-and-pasting. The blog consists of original texts by its author, which may quote other material, but which reflect a certain viewpoint on them. There is absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that what I write here is coloured by my own opinion. Nevertheless, I do try to present the facts truthfully and giving links to where I found information (and where the reader can check what elements of the original I have selected for discussion and what not). I am sure many readers following the links back will see the facts reported in a different light, that is what intellectual enquiry is about surely. So it is not just a matter of a bruised "ego" when public accusations are made of falsehood first by an antiquities dealer and then the list owner of the Museum's security network (who has for the second time now played into the hands of a lobbyist concerned at all costs to discredit and silence critics of no-questions-asked antiquity collecting).

To answer the details of Cremers' complaint:
1) He accuses me of quoting on list private emails. The reader can however verify that I merely referred to what he had written earlier (when I had queried the appearance of what is clearly a personal attack on a moderated discussion list about cultural property). There is nothing "unethical" about reference to the fact there had been earlier correspondence on a matter.

2) The letter I asked him not to post to the list was a hasty first reaction to seeing the original post by Welsh on a moderated list. I wanted to make it clear to the list owner that this was not a reply I wanted him to post to the list.

3) Cremers writes: "it is NOT true - I am inclined to underline the unpleasant diagnosis "Barford the Liar", but without question mark - that I complained that
you did not re-register". Well, I certainly got that impression from a message he sent to me and a few others that had by this time joined in the discussion about the appropriateness of Welsh's post. It seemed to me that he was saying that he gave the opportunity to reply on list and I had not done so immediately. If that is not what he meant, he should be more careful with his phrasing. I did not reply immediately as I wanted time to think and also have more important things to do in my life than blogging or dealing with Mr Welsh and his puerile antics and smoothing Ton Cremers' ego by reacting immediately to his emails.

Anyway Mr Cremers has given antiquities dealer Welsh what he wanted, the pleasure of seeing he has been able to stir up some more trouble in the camp of his enemies. After all, the latter has declared that he is giving up dialogue as a tool to achieve the no-questions-asked antiquity dealers' aims.