ACCG International Affairs Chair on the Ball

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The announcement that there is a US-Egyptian agreement on the cards to fight antiquities smuggling has received relatively wide coverage in the online media alerts. All of them without exception regard this as good news. The only place so far in which it has roused (extremely) negative coverage is within the dugup antiquities dealers' lobby group, the "Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild". As if those lobbying to keep smuggled coins coming onto the US market were not making fools of themselves enough, on the receipt of the news of announcement of a forthcoming emergency cultural property regulations agreement between the US and Egypt, the chair of the ACCG International Affairs Committee shows just how au fait he is in those international affairs:

Whether or not the reports emanating out of Egypt are true in every detail, the very fact that such a report could be made by an official of the stature of Zahi Hawass does prove these disturbing truths...

[UPDATE: He reposted it here] It seems Dave ("send a message to Congress") Welsh also does not recognise the procedural difference between emergency regulations and the MOUs envisaged in the CPIA. He urges antiquity collectors:

make your disgust with this dishonest charade known in the public record. Do this every time a MOU request is considered, until Congress finally realizes that the American people know that they are being lied to, and that their legitimate interests and rights are being trampled upon by the Cultural Heritage Center bureaucracy.

that's "legitimate interests and rights" to handle stolen and smuggled artefacts? What exactly are these ACCG folk campaigning against? Is protesting every measure intended to cut down illicit trade going to enamour them with Congress and the American people, or draw attention to the ills of the current system?

UPDATE 24th October 2011: I guess when you are a coin collector there are no real limits to how much stupidity you think you can get away with passing off as real discussion. Dave Welsh has posted a text, citing Nevine El-Aref as his authority, "putting the record straight" in which he telepathically determines that what is being proposed is not Emergency Import Restrictions after all, but a [CCPIA section 2606] "MOU" which he says is different. Nevertheless when the story first broke back in May this year, the ACCG were accepting that what was in the air were (as was reported from the Cairo meeting between a US delegation and the Minister of Antiquities) emergency import restrictions. http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2011/05/hawass-says-emergency-import.html - dealer's lobbyist Tompa specifically protesting at the time that there was "no emergency".

So, if this is going to be an MOU like Cyprus, China, Italy, Greece and (hopefully) Bulgaria, where Mr Welsh in section 2606 of the CCPIA is there an authority to "track and catch antiquities smugglers in the country [USA]? What does section 2606 (or 2608) of the CCPIA say about "all legal procedures to return illegally smuggled antiquities to Egypt"? Have the people smuggling coins through Baltimore to provoke a court case over the Cyprus and China MOUs been "tracked and caught"? Have the seized coins imported illegally by the ACCG now been returned to China and Cyprus? What are you talking about Mr Welsh?

Nevertheless my point was not what the document is called, but the comment made months after the guy went into retirement, that "an official of the stature of Zahi Hawass" is used to intimate that the reports are true (so "write to Congress to complain!") . As even a coiney should know, Dr Hawass is of course no longer in the Egyptian administration and made no such report this month.

Coineys are inordinately fond of saying things, as does coin-dealer-guy here, like "Mr. Barford is the one who does not correctly understand the situation and whose remarks have been misleading", but time and time again show that if I write a sentence more than eight words long, they get lost and cannot follow at all what it is I actually said.


Vignette: I guess the ACCG's International affairs committee did not send a letter congratulating the new SCA chief on his appointment and looking forward to fruitful co-operation in the future fighting looting and smuggling.