Some "Europeans Oppose Potential U.S. State Department Import Restrictions"?

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It is difficult not to smile at the latest ACCG press release drafted by former 'black propaganda' specialist, ACCG's John Hooker. It reads, reassuringly for no-questions-asked coin collectors, "Europeans Oppose Potential U.S. State Department Import Restrictions" and begins:

A wave of comment from Europe has appeared in opposition to potential U.S.State Department restrictions on the importation of coins from antiquity.

More "Yin and Yang"? What a hoot, what simpletons. Apparently according to the ACCG coineys a "wave" is... three people.

Greece: Anastasios P. Tzamalis,
(former President of the Hellenic Numismatic Society),
Italy: Ing. Ermanno Winsemann Falghera
(President of the Societa Numismatica Italiana)
Bavaria: Martin Zeil,
(Minister of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology).

These three all support the import from their countries of artefactual material (dugup ancient coins) into the US irrespective of whether they can be documented as legally exported.

All in the interest of "free trade" and all "supporting US collectors and dealers" who might want to import such material.

Well, three Europeans supporting international cultural property banditry is hardly a "wave" (if that is so, the six hundred or so that signed SAFE's petition opposing it is the "mother of all tsunamis"). I suspect that, no matter what these three individuals say out of coiney-business self-interest, the people of Greece, Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany as a whole really do not want their country to be involved in the the erosive trade of illicit antiquities, from Greece, Italy or wherever.

I think it high time that the responsible artefact hunters of the UK, so frequently invoked in US coiney propaganda, make their positions felt by an official statement of the NCMD and FID. I propose that the Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild together with Peter Tompa, acting on behalf of the PNG and IAPN address an open letter to these two organizations, together with their partner organization the Portable Antiquities Scheme requesting they make their official position known on imports of illegally exported artefacts by US dealers and collectors from European source countries, such as the UK.

Vignette: Three musketeers fighting the coiney cause in Europe.