ACCG Propagandist Waving His Pompoms

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It would seem too many coineys have been reading the relevant material and asking awkward questions and the usual ACCG culprits could not cope with keeping up the smokescreen on their own. So as John Hooker, former black propaganda and yellow journalism specialist puts it

"Wayne Sayles requested my help about a year ago, he did so because he knew of my previous work in championing the causes of the amateur and private researcher. I've been doing this sort of thing since 1995".

Hooker now gets paid by the ACCG for editorial and writing tasks in aid of the organization. He immodestly informs collectors of dugup coins:

I am very good at getting support for the ACCG and can run rings around anyone at the AIA. You are not organized and have no one fighting for you. You will have to do this for yourselves. This last weekend was hectic, with everything else going on, I still had to look at a few drafts of the ANA press release that its author sent me, while donning my cheerleaders uniform and waving my pom poms about to counteract the AIA spike on Friday.

This is the event to which he is referring no doubt. So he is claiming the surge of coiney comments which followed the lull to be due to his efforts with the pom poms. Hmmm. Anyhow he now has a special message for coin collectors wondering whether the ACCG has been leading them all by the nose:

As often happens with this sort of thing, the real issues have been been confused to the point that that are barely recognizable any more, Because the clock is ticking and you only have today and tomorrow to make your opinions known to DOS, I am posting this so you can have a chance to present a well-thought out response.

Oddly enough, Mr Hooker does not provide any links to the Act itself so that coineys can check for themselves where it says what the Canadian pom pom man says it does. Obviously the coineys are expected to take his word for it. In other words telling them what to say:

First of all, this MOU is not about Greek exports, it is about U.S. imports. I defend any nation's right to limit or totally eliminate exports as they see fit. I might think them hare-brained, or that they could come up with a more efficient plan, but the bottom line is that it is up to them to do what they think best. To do otherwise would be to grant them no sovereignty.

Mighty big of him, eh? But it appears that Mr Hooker feels the need to dumb down to extremities (presumably considering that considering the bilateral agreement between the US and Greece would be about two things would be beyond the mental capacities of his coiney audience). In reality, those of us who have read the CPIA more than superficially know that the bilateral agreement would be about the import of items which have been legally exported. If it has been legally exported, it comes in, if it has not, it stays out of the US market. Seems simple enough to me.

Second, In this case, the subject is not about restricting U.S. imports from Greece, it is about restricting objects by type, rather than by port of exit.

No it is not, it is an agreement between the US and Greece (SECTION 307. [23] IMPORT RESTRICTIONS. (a) DOCUMENTATION OF LAWFUL EXPORTATION.- duh). Clear as punch in black and white for the oafiest oaf to read and understand. Why not give them the LINK Mr Hooker? Try giving them a reference to SECTION 305. [16] DESIGNATION OF MATERIALS COVERED BY AGREEMENTS OR EMERGENCY ACTIONS (1) too. They can read can't they? Anyway:

The ACCG is against this because responsibility is shifted from the state to the consumer. We are disturbed about this for many reasons, but I think that one of the most important reasons is that chain of ownership of coins is something that has not been maintained for centuries. It is most often impossible to establish.

Eh? The responsibility is shifted to the exporter (which in most cases will be the seller) to conduct the export procedure properly so the US consumer can be sure they are buying legally exported goods. I cannot see why collectors are up in arms against that. Perhaps they are led by their observations of the market to think that if their dealers were prevented from buying illegally imported material, the supply of coins on the market would dry up as quickly as you can say "ethical portable antiquity collecting".

Mr Hooker should be telling collectors that what the collector has at home or what is already circulating on the internal market is not of any concern to the CCPIA, this act as any fool who reads it can see is wholly restricted to the issue of what is imported by the dealers (which is why the DEALERS are unhappy about it). As a result, the "chain of ownership" issue is totally irrelevant here, all that has to be documented (again by the exporter) is where a coin was a few years before the MOU is signed. But then if a dealer (both the one doing the selling and the one doing the buying in order to supply his clients) doing due diligence cannot establish that, then he cannot place his hand on his heart and say he knows the object had not been looted in the last ten years, can he? So, basically if he's an ethical dealer (and they all assure us that they all are), he should not be selling it anyway. There is of course not a word of this in what the ACCG are telling their members. Not a word.

Vignette: Hooker and his pom poms?