US Collectors' Concepts of "Discrimination"

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Coin dealers' paid lobbyist Peter Tompa suggests that I am wrong in suggesting that it was specifically requested that the public comments to the CPAC on Bulgaria's request to help stop the trade in smuggled artefacts restricted to section 303(a)1 of the CCPIA . Well, it is there in black and white what the comments are supposed to address. Tompa says that instead of doing this:

many collectors have quite rightly focused on the potential impact of import restrictions on their hobby. Don't such concerns go to the ability of Americans to trade and collect ancient coins that are freely available worldwide (including within Bulgaria itself)? And as such, don't complaints about discriminatory import restrictions go directly to the CPIA's concerted response requirement as well as the use of ancient coins as educational tools? So, what exactly is Barford, the obnoxious know-it-all, talking about?

I am talking about section 303(a)1 of the CCPIA, which does not ask the President to consider "the potential impact of import restrictions on legitimate antiquity collecting". The impact on collecting smuggled artefacts is clear, and having that impact is what the MOU (and the Convention upon which it is based) is all about. "Obnoxious" though that may seem to those who sees nothing much wrong with a little bit of "free enterprise" trading smuggled goods supplied by culture criminals, that's what I am talking about. It is also what the CPAC will be discussing as part of the commitment of the US to play their part in curbing the trade in illicit antiquities, as expressed in becoming a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention in 1983.

Tompa suggests it is "quite right" that in their public comments, collectors do not address the issues raised for the President's consideration by section 303(a)1 of the CCPIA. The President of the USA is not asked either by section 303(a)1 to consider whether the proposed measures "go to the ability of Americans to trade and collect ancient coins that are freely available worldwide (including within Bulgaria itself)". Again, the coins with paperwork showing legal origins are legally bought and sold in most countries party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Mr Tompa has not yet provided the list I asked for of the countries which are states parties of the 1970 UNESCO Convention where it is actually legal (licit trade) to peddle dugup artefacts smuggled out of Bulgaria. Perhaps he could do that to help the President consider this question which the dealers' lobbyist thinks the President (and his advisory committee) should be pondering (and so that collectors can refer to it in their comments). In which other countries party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property is it not only perfectly possible to buy looted, stolen or smuggled artefacts on the open market, but is also entirely LEGAL to do so?

Tompa asks "don't complaints about [what he calls] discriminatory import restrictions go directly to the CPIA's concerted response requirement"? No, as I've explained earlier. Any import restrictions actioning article 3 of the UNESCO Convention are those which apply to any trader (importer) in any 1970-UNESCO-Convention-Party state trying to import smuggled antiquities. The rest of the states parties apply these measures automatically, only the US refuses to recognise its obligations in that regard in favour of excusive MOUs on the basis of Article 9.

The crux of the matter is that the Americans are notorious in the rest of the world for believing that they are in some way exempt from this or that measure that they do not want to apply. Over the decades we have seen various forms of manifestation of this American exclusionism in a variety of contexts in international affairs. The result is that, when required to behave like the citizens of every other nation among those of the international community which have become party to a convention, it is seen as some kind of discrimination. Being asked to behave like everybody else is asked to behave is not - in my opinion at least - discrimination. For two decades the US trade in dugup artefacts from Bulgaria has been going on under everybody's noses, nobody has ever lifted a finger over there to stop it. Kilogramme loads of this stuff have been changing hands weekly on EBay. This has engendered a feeling of entitlement, as shown by Mark Hogan who does not think there should be any curbs on teh US trade in dugup: "coins, bronze crosses, Byzantine religious metals, etc.". Why is this if the US is a state party of a convention that explicitly forbids (as illicit) such trade in the absence of proper export procedures being followed by both parties (seller and buyer)? Where are the US authorities and lawmakersw? Asleep? Powerless? Or simply totally apathetic?

If they don't like the Convention, let the US withdraw from it, not hypocritically pretend they are adhering to it, while continuing to ignore the core of its measures totally. Nobody is being "discriminated against" by being asked to do what all in the US antiquities trade should have been doing (and not just in the case of Bulgarian artefacts) since 1983.

Vignette: USA as an island