.
Mr Tompa and I were discussing (in the context of his ever-changeable views on metal detecting) the Convention which is about the "Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property". My last comment sent to the Tompa blog (would have been the seventh, but apparently will not be since he refused to publish it):
He says metal detectorists should be regulated so there is no need for import controls on illegally EXPORTED coins from other countries. "Do metal detectors write export licences?" I ask. It really beats me why Tompa and his coiney pals cannot accept the simple fact that "the State Department's process for imposing import restrictions on coins" applies to those without documentation of legal EXPORT, not legal digging up. The 1970 Convention is on the "Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property". As anybody who properly observes the cultura property debate will know, there are other international documents about the digging up of antiquities Delhi 1956, London 1969, Valetta 1992 etc.
With a stubbornness that does not surprise me any longer, Tompa pretends he has not understood the point made and all he does in "answer" is to refer me to: 19 USC section 2602 Section (a)(1)(C) (ii). But of course anyone who checks it can see that 19 USC 2602 refers to "AGREEMENTS TO IMPLEMENT ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONVENTION" [ie, to spell it out, the Convention which is about import and export of cultural property, not about controls over the manner in which culture criminals get their hands on it].
But it seems that although 120 other nations have understood it to be about smuggling and export licences, and accordingly signed and ratified it, certain groups in the United States insist on the "right" of the USA to force their own entirely idiosyncratic interpretation of the Convention on the rest of the world (another example of those imperialistic tendencies that do so much to damage the image of the USA in the outside world).
This is very much a case of "Coiney Blather Obscures Rational Approaches to Smuggling". While the antiquity dealers and their lobbyists insist on talking around the subject and not addressing the issues at hand, there will never be a resolution of the problem of the trade in illicit antiquities. But that, of course, is exactly what dodgy dealers want isn't it? Surely Peter Tompa's firm, Bailey and Ehrenburg , are not intentionally lobbying on behalf of the latter are they?
[And yes, to answer another point, Southern European Greeks and Bulgarians have complexions somewhat darker than pasty-faced Washington lawyers who from what they write clearly have a wholly Orientalist disregard for the citizens of every single 'source country' for the ancient coins and portable antiquities they covet (except the UK, because of the special friendship between US numismatists and the UK with its all-too-liberal heritage laws and its PAS) .The coiney position over other people's heritage is less "racist" as Tompa would have me say than utterly neo-colonialist]
Mr Tompa and I were discussing (in the context of his ever-changeable views on metal detecting) the Convention which is about the "Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property". My last comment sent to the Tompa blog (would have been the seventh, but apparently will not be since he refused to publish it):
No, you are the one who is changing the subject. As I am trying to point out, the 1970 UNESCO Convention clearly deals with smuggling not artefact DIGGING.
Once again, we have before us the unedifying spectacle of the professional coiney lobbyist trying to twist the wording of a published document in the pretence that it means something other than what it does, and getting frustrated when somebody actually challenges what they assert about something anybody can check for themselves. Let it be noted that Washington lawyer and Lobboblogger Peter Tompa indicates from his reply that he is unable to justify his own, personal, interpretation of the text of the 1970 UNESCO Convention.
"I will publish no more from you" may be the easiest response, but it does not answer the point I made.
He says metal detectorists should be regulated so there is no need for import controls on illegally EXPORTED coins from other countries. "Do metal detectors write export licences?" I ask. It really beats me why Tompa and his coiney pals cannot accept the simple fact that "the State Department's process for imposing import restrictions on coins" applies to those without documentation of legal EXPORT, not legal digging up. The 1970 Convention is on the "Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property". As anybody who properly observes the cultura property debate will know, there are other international documents about the digging up of antiquities Delhi 1956, London 1969, Valetta 1992 etc.
With a stubbornness that does not surprise me any longer, Tompa pretends he has not understood the point made and all he does in "answer" is to refer me to: 19 USC section 2602 Section (a)(1)(C) (ii). But of course anyone who checks it can see that 19 USC 2602 refers to "AGREEMENTS TO IMPLEMENT ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONVENTION" [ie, to spell it out, the Convention which is about import and export of cultural property, not about controls over the manner in which culture criminals get their hands on it].
But it seems that although 120 other nations have understood it to be about smuggling and export licences, and accordingly signed and ratified it, certain groups in the United States insist on the "right" of the USA to force their own entirely idiosyncratic interpretation of the Convention on the rest of the world (another example of those imperialistic tendencies that do so much to damage the image of the USA in the outside world).
This is very much a case of "Coiney Blather Obscures Rational Approaches to Smuggling". While the antiquity dealers and their lobbyists insist on talking around the subject and not addressing the issues at hand, there will never be a resolution of the problem of the trade in illicit antiquities. But that, of course, is exactly what dodgy dealers want isn't it? Surely Peter Tompa's firm, Bailey and Ehrenburg , are not intentionally lobbying on behalf of the latter are they?
[And yes, to answer another point, Southern European Greeks and Bulgarians have complexions somewhat darker than pasty-faced Washington lawyers who from what they write clearly have a wholly Orientalist disregard for the citizens of every single 'source country' for the ancient coins and portable antiquities they covet (except the UK, because of the special friendship between US numismatists and the UK with its all-too-liberal heritage laws and its PAS) .The coiney position over other people's heritage is less "racist" as Tompa would have me say than utterly neo-colonialist]
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