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It seems Rick St Hilaire is as bored as the rest of us watching the ACCG's lawyers draw out still further the process of getting the Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt forfeiture case into court: "Accusations pepper the ACCG's pleadings as the trade group makes efforts to paint a picture of intrigue and wrongdoing within the U.S. State Department" that's basically it (Rick St. Hilaire, 'Accusations, Embargoes, and More of Same for Baltimore Coins Test Case', Cultural Heritage Lawyer blogspot Monday, September 30, 2013).
we then had an organiser come up and say the farmer hadnt listen to a word the club had said about the type of land to detect on and apologised on behalf of the club and said he was opening up the rest of the land that was being saved for the next days digI bet both the organizer and the farmer kept their money though. Throughout the rally, participants were coming up with almost no collectable finds at all (nota bene which was said by all to be unusual - "evey single person i spoke to had not found a single thing not even the tin foil and gun cartridges ") and the thinking was that all of the fields made available had been heavily detected before, and thus already depleted of any collectable elements of the archaeological record. Note also one other thing, these people are all targeting likely productive areas next to ('castle', market town) or on ("settlement") known sites and monuments. Their collecting is not random.
[UK] Archaeologists have warned that budget cuts to the sector will leave future generations facing a lost legacy of historic heritage abandoned “to short-termism” and “financial expediency”.So sort of like archaeological sites all over the country also gutted of most of their diagnostic metal artefacts in a single generation - a lost legacy of historic heritage abandoned “to short-termism” and “political expediency”. So the rest figures:
Specialist advisers act as a safeguard against planning proposals which would otherwise damage local heritage, as they help councils to make informed decisions. Yet local councils across England have lost about one in three archaeological advisers and building conservation experts since 2006, according to the charity.[...] The number of archaeological advisers, including historic environment records (HER) officers, has fallen by 28 per cent, and building conservation advisers have been cut by 33 per cent over the past seven years. In the past 12 months alone the number of archaeological specialists has fallen by 3 per cent and the numbers of conservation officers by 4 per cent.[...] Campaigners are calling for “responsibility for the nation’s heritage” to be borne equally by local and national government. The provision of conservation and archaeological services, to safeguard the historic and built environment, should be made a statutory obligation on all local authorities, Rescue proposes, but says that also means they should be given the resources needed to do this.Perhaps not the main factor, but certainly not insignificant in the undermining of the position of archaeology and conservation is the message that "anyone can do it' with a metal detector and that by hoiking stuff out of archaeological sites, we are in some way preserving heritage. Archaeology has dropped the ball in not explaining matters in an articulate and meaningful way loud and long enough for the preservation message to hit home, but merely "going with the FLO" (sorry, could not resist) and keeping quiet about the insidious destruction of archaeological evidence for the entertainment and profit of an exploitive minority right under their very noses.
Surely [this is] not because we are the first club in the UK in which members have obligation to report 100% of their historical finds to PAS, another target of your hate-posts?This suggests that Mr Murawski has not even begun to get to grasp with the reasoning behind my comments on this blog, neither about reporting of finds, the effects of current policies on the archaeological record, the heritage issues at stake nor the PAS. Still, that's more his problem than mine. I'd like to turn to the comment about the manner in which his club considers itself exceptional.
Dorothy Lobel King @DorothyKing 12 h anyone who claims it's a Greek original can't be taken seriouslyI would love to see the full results of those analyses, alloys, trace elements and corrosion products. Do you think they'd send them to me if I asked nicely?
may I suggest you contact a few museums to see how many items I have given or are on long term loan agreements with them. Like everything you print, no research is ever undertaken to show what we contribute, only what we take.First of all museums do not now release information which could be construed as personal data. I suggest if a metal detectorist wants to have that point taken into consideration, they'd do better to put the tally online themselves.
WORLINGWORTH LOCAL HISTORY GROUP is holding its first METAL-DETECTING RALLY on the 29th September. Metal detectorists from all over the south-east of England are coming to Worlingworth to enjoy our hospitality and hopefully they'll uncover some interesting artefacts from the past. Funds raised will be ploughed back into the community in a number of ways. If the day proves to be a success, then it might become an annual event!Covering more and more fields as each one becomes successively "hammered".
Over on a metal detecting forum near you, discussion is continuing about the Fifth Offley commercial artefact hunting rally. But the people concerned would prefer to be the only people doing it:
"Może warto Drogi Panie P.B. pogadać z nami na naszym forum a nie obrażać?"Insulting? Where, maybe they'd like to show us where they have been insulted in my post largely about Julian Watters and the PAS? These Poles seem quick to take offence at an imagined slight. If England is a country with "normal laws" and these folk are doing nothing wrong, then what is the problem with bringing out into the open what they are doing and discussing it openly? They want to participate in the joint archaeological heritage of the British Isles, then let them also participate in discussions about it. As for the guy ("Marand9", 29thSept 10:07) wanting my "address", the link to the blog leads also to its comments section. Let the rally participants feel free to use it to tell me where I am mistaken about what I, and everybody else, saw on that film.
Podaję adres blogu Paula Barforda, jednak proponuję by powstrzymać się od komentowania tam jego wpisów [...] zapewne blog pana PB działa jak kilka polskich for poszukiwawczych, gdzie "nieopoprawne" wpisy są momentalnie usuwane a jakakolwiek polemika niedopuszczalna.Nothing could be further from the truth. Obviously if artefact hunters disagree with what I am saying or wish to address my concerns, this is the place to do it. I suggest if they are afraid that I will delete anything that does not suit me (the usual telkkie excuse for not engaging in proper discussion), then they can post the comment in duplicate, once here, with a copy on their own forum for all to see.
I would have thought it recognisable by most normal people to be a rather risky task to attempt to write a biography (and psychological profile) of someone you have never met and have not the faintest idea of what he did where, when, with whom, why and in what order. But that is basically what the ACCG's Dave Welsh has just done, making it all up as he goes in his latest ad hominem "Ancient Coins" commentary There is very little in this entire ill-researched text which is true, apart from my name being Paul Barford. Most of the disparate pieces of information Welsh hangs on that name are false or misrepresented. Really, really pathetic. - Barford left the Institute of Archaeology in London without matriculating.Not a fact, can be checked in the Institute's journal where a summary of my dissertaion is published. Mr Welsh has not checked any facts, he's just making this up.
- I believe that he was later awarded a baccalaureate degree from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw.Not a fact, Polish universities in this period did not offer such degrees (they do now). At the time I studied a five-year course led to a master's degree, which I was awarded before I started teaching there (documented in the Institute's prospectus for the time). Mr Welsh is ignorant of this.
- Mr. Barford's expectations [...] were thwarted by the fall of the Polish Communist regimeNot a fact, as for many people in Poland in 1989, funnily enough this was the beginning, not an end.
Erin Thompson (professor of art crime at the City University of New York) has an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, To protect Syria's antiquities — don't buy them September 29, 2013.Coins, jewelry, sculpture and other objects from Syria's archaeological sites can be stunningly beautiful and are eagerly sought by collectors. Recognizing the damage done by amateur diggers who supplied this trade in the past, Syria's domestic law has forbidden unauthorized excavation and export of antiquities since 1963. That essentially means there was no legal trade in recently excavated treasures even before the fighting began. But the chaos of the Syrian civil war gives looters and buyers unprecedented opportunities.[...] Since the fighting began in 2011, investigators have found hundreds of Syrian antiquities for sale on the black market in Lebanon and Turkey, the first step in a chain of transactions that, in many cases, will lead to sales in the United States and Europe. [...] You don't need to travel to a secret warehouse in Beirut to get Syrian antiquities. You can simply go online, where $119 will get you a coin minted in 150 BC for the Seleucid kings in Apamea, once a flourishing city and now a heavily looted archaeological site north of Homs, in the Syrian countryside. The website I saw informed the buyer that the coin shows an "earthen green patina with some minor deposits" — such coloring and encrustations mean that this coin was recently unearthed from centuries underground and is tantamount to an admission that it came from an illegal excavation.It is nice to see that part of this might be based on a reading of an earlier post of mine with a link to a coin dealer's website for that coin. Even nicer to see that if you follow that link, you find "this product does not exist any more". While it is good to see the message is getting across even to dealers, it is disturbing to read that the coin mentioned might have been destroyed (John Anderson, Praefectus coins, Vancouver Canada and USA).
The looting of a big chunk of heritage can take place like this, coin by coin, object by object. [...] There is a simple solution: Do not buy antiquities. The United States is a major market for these objects, with some buyers who know better and many who don't. Americans can create a market for smuggled antiquities and drive looting, or they can defeat it. There was a major decrease in elephant poaching after Americans decided that the beauty of ivory was no excuse for the destruction that brought it to market. We stopped buying ivory buttons, figurines and other trinkets that seemed individually seemed too small to make a difference — but they did. We need to have the same attitude when we see a tempting ancient coin, statuette or piece of jewelry.Then the author addresses the usual justification of the heritage-grabbers:
Some collectors [...] argue that they are rescuing antiquities by giving them a new home outside of the instability of Syria. But such thinking only feeds the market forces that result in looting. Moreover, the extraction of "rescued" antiquities involves the destruction of the surrounding archaeological context and any associated objects that lack the beauty required by the marketplace. When context is destroyed, so is the chance for the kind of careful study that reveals the workings of ancient civilizations .[...] It is best simply not to buy antiquities, particularly from Syria or anywhere else where conflict and heritage are colliding: Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of South America and Egypt, where in August an entire museum was ransacked, with rioters stealing the antiquities and burning the mummies. As the international community wrestles with what action it must take to end the death and destruction in Syria, every one of us can help simply by not acting — that is, by not buying Syrian antiquities, beautiful as they are. For the sake of Syria's heritage, and the world's, remember: No market means no looting.Powerful words. Let us see if self-serving greedy collectors pay the slightest bit of attention.
From Heritage Action's Heritage Journal:Frankly while the rest of the detectorists just stay quiet and do not react to this kind of stuff coming from their own ranks (by trying to stop these louts, distancing themselves from it every time it happens, solidarising with the victims, or even just apologising), I think we are justified in holding them all responsible.
Another artefact hunter of similar ilk, a Mr Taylor, (who has been spoken to by the police for openly publishing threats to come to my house and attack me), has taken to impersonating us so if you see any obscene or otherwise objectionable comments in the name of Heritage Action or similar or any of its members, they won’t have come from us.
That's what you get when the Americans condition their honouring the 1970 UNESCO Convention on whether they are friendly towards the Convention's other states parties today or not. I bet they are glad to get that off their hands, they've had this thing, supposedly from the Kalmakarra Cave, known as the Western Cave, in the western highlands of Iran (looted between 1989 and 1992) since 2000. What an ugly ridiculous looking piece, which it has been convincingly argued may be a fake ('Is the Kalmakara ('Western Cave') Griffin a Fake?', Saturday, 12 June 2010). Readers of this blog will know the name discretely missed out of the report of the US "art dealer", who imported it for some reason saying it was from "Syria".
A 2,700 year-old silver chalice may be a new token of friendship between the United States and Iran, at least that's the way Iran's cultural heritage chief sees it. Whatever the case, Mohammad-Ali Najafi was palpably delighted Friday to see the ancient Persian artifact return to its homeland. The ceremonial drinking vessel -- or rhyton -- had gotten snagged in a U.S. customs warehouse for years, held up by bad diplomatic relations. It had been in New York since 2003, when an art dealer smuggled it into the country from Iran. Customs officials have long wanted to return the rhyton to Iran, according to a New York Post report. But decades of frigid relations between Washington and Tehran kept it frozen in bureaucratic limbo.
The Cleveland Museum of Art's ancient bronze statue of Apollo has stirred controversy since the museum purchased the work in 2004 reportedly for $5 million from Phoenix Ancient Art.Now they are making a big exhibition of it:The Cleveland Museum of Art rarely publishes catalogs that try to stir broad public debate on politics, law, cultural identity and global diplomacy. With the release of a new catalog today, however, the museum is wading directly into the international controversy over collecting ancient works of art whose ownership histories, or provenances, remain partially or entirely unknown. The book, “Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo,” authored by the museum’s curator of Greek and Roman art, Michael Bennett, accompanies a new exhibition opening Sunday that focuses on a controversial ancient bronze statue of Apollo purchased by the museum in 2004. Using scientific evidence and art-historical analysis, Bennett builds the most forceful case yet that the life-size bronze is an ancient Greek original, not a later Roman copy, and that it is likely the work of Praxiteles, one of the greatest sculptors of ancient Greece. The book is also an impassioned critique of international laws aimed at halting trade in looted antiquities. Bennett states that such laws – while correctly focused on halting illegal activity - have also had the effect of casting stigma on “orphaned” works such as the museum’s Apollo, whose time and place of excavation and recent history can’t be proven beyond doubt. [...] Bennett, however, states that the Apollo was one of thousands of antiquities in private hands whose ownership histories are not completely documented. Lack of such documentation, Bennett writes, is not evidence that an object was looted. It’s not a case of guilty until proven innocent. “Illegality cannot be presumed, or we are heading toward a repeat of the Spanish Inquisition or the McCarthy hearings,” Bennett writes.Yep, there it is again. Catchy soundbite, but what, in real terms does that mean? Actually it is the clarion call of no-questions-asked collecting, and as such surely in today's market is the wrong approach. This presentation was apparently scheduled for 2006, but then various things 'happened' and the plans were shelved.
There are several things as somebody living in this neck of the woods that I simply do not understand about the apparent ease with which Cleveland accepted the collecting history supplied by the dealers that sold this object. Several things really do not ring true. I'd like to go through some of them and ask how Cleveland approached each of these conundrums. A key point is this one: Before the museum bought the sculpture from Phoenix Ancient Art, it obtained a written statement from German lawyer Ernst-Ulrich Walter stating that he found the sculpture lying in pieces in a building on a family estate he reclaimed after the fall of East Germany. Walter also reportedly said he remembered seeing the piece on the family estate in the 1930s.I've discussed Mr Walter (and, I think, not without significance, his museum) earlier here. He said he saw this statue in the 1930s, in Hitler's Germany that would be, which is the first record of its being above ground anyone has traced so far. Interestingly, it is reported that the object was seen in 1994 by Dr. Lucia Marinescu, former Director of the National History Museum of Romania who for some reason viewed the work in fragments "while touring the estate". It is not clear what the relationship was between Marinescu and Walter. What is also of note is that this report however was for some reason only published in 2003. In 1994 the sculpture was sold (very cheaply as a "garden ornament" by the hapless Ernst-Ulrich Walter - despite having been told by Marinescu that it was ancient) and subsequently reassembled and restored before passing through the hands of a Dutch dealer (still in 1994). The subsequent ten years of its collecting history are missing. Brodie says "It then dropped out of sight until it reappeared on the Swiss premises of Phoenix Ancient Art in 2002" - which as we note with interest was the timing of the publication of Marinescu's report of her examination of the statue in Leutwitz, what prompted her to dig out her notes and publish them at precisely this time?
Steven Litt, 'The Cleveland Museum of Art wades into global controversy over antiquities collecting with exhibition and catalog on its ancient bronze Apollo', The Plain Dealer September 27, 2013
In the September 2004 issue of the Art Newspaper, the then Cleveland director Katharine Lee Reid was quoted as saying that the museum had exercised due diligence before the acquisition, but that Phoenix Ancient Art had not revealed to the museum details of the statue’s recent provenance. This reticence was understandable, she thought, because the company would want to protect its competitive advantage [...] Rather confusingly, Phoenix Ancient Art’s proprietors Ali and Hicham Aboutaam subsequently stated in a letter published in the November issue of the Art Newspaper that “… it is acceptable and common practice, for obvious competitive reasons, to omit all but the last decade of ownership in publishing a history …”, though the last decade’s ownership history of the bronze was exactly what they had omitted to tell the Cleveland.There is no information about an EU export licence for it (Neil Brodie, 'Cleveland Apollo Sauroktonos', Stanford 5 Feb 2009; see also Henry Adams, 'Questions About Apollo', Smithsonian.com, May 10, 2012).
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| Apollo Sauroktonos by Praxiteles - copia nei Musei Vaticani- Salla delle statue, IV century B.C. (photo by M. Pardy) |
Collectors acquire these things for their intrinsic value, not because they have an interest in the archaeological context in which they are found.[...]
To a collector or dealer, provenance is NOT the recording of a findspot. It is instead the collecting history of a coin or other antiquity.Yes, we can see every dealer's website, every online showcased collection full of that [irony script /off]. And the process of taking it out of the ground, where when and how and under what legal situation, is someow NOT part of that collecting history? It is surely the fundamental first part of the collecting history which determines the licitness of all subsquent transfers of ownership. Meanwhile one has to congratulate Mr Welsh on his astuteness and grasp of the subject in hand. He gets it in one when he suddenly (it seems) discovers:
Meanwhile Mr. Barford clearly is only able to think about artifacts being illicitly excavated today and later being sold to collectors.Yes indeedy, that is, in a nutshell, what the whole blog here is about. And one of the problems here is the way that dealers and collectors pretend the problem does not exist, because "coins have been collected since the days of Petrarch don't ya know"? ("consider the immense numbers of unprovenanced coins and other artifacts that were excavated long [ago]") and when the collectors and dealers alike have busily been throwing away of carelessly losing all the documentation of previous ownership, then who is to say what is what? I have addressed this question so many times I really cannot be bothered to repeat myself. ACCG's Welsh is wasting everybody's time and trying to deflect us from getting to the core of the matter by arguing around in circles. It is not me that is "missing the point".
due to my well known and consistent opposition to Mr. Barford's [...] views, and to his vocal insistence that an unrealistic, rigid requirement for provenance documentation of every artifact (however minor and inexpensive) is a necessity for "ethical collecting."But wait a second... That is precisely what in the UK is the definition of responsible artefact hunting, isn't it? The requirement for provenance documentation of every artefact (however minor and inexpensive) taken out of the archaeological record to be collected, the information loss is to be mitigated by reporting the object together with its findspot to the relevant institutions, through the Treasure Trove law in Scotland, the PAS in England and (for the moment) Wales.
[A] bloody nighthawk found rare gold item on my permission...and had the cheek to show it to some people I know. I am livid... the farmer doesnt know.. would you tell? the nighthawk is unlikely to come clean about it
Why even hesitate? you have a duty to inform the farmer and inform the police. Do you know this chap and are you 100% sure that he found this item on the land you detect on? if so, then you need to inform the correct authorities pronto.Member "housed" (Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:44 pm) is of like responsible opinion:
definately needs reporting. It's theft pure and simple.Now, it is totally clear what anyone (anyone responsible) learning of a crime being committed is obliged to do. There is no question that the landowner should know he has been robbed, and given any information the reporter has. Secondly the police should be informed.
it wasnt exactly treasure,, but the nighthawk found a rather valuable coin which he boasted about. he knows he shouldn't have been on the land, and was trespassing,and in my own personal view he should offer my farmer the 50% value.. which is around 600 pounds (the coin sells for around 1200 in the condition it was)..as I would have done had I been the finder.. however the guy, who I dont personally have much to do with is rather uncouth.. and is unlikely to own up.. should I leave it and put it down to sour grapes on my part, or let the farmer know? He isnt a rich farmer and I am sure he would appreciate the value of such a coin on his pastures. if I tell the farmer he still cant get his 50% because I cant make the nighthawk hand it over.. its really sad because this fellow was boasting about finding this, and he shouldnt have even been on the field detecting.. I feel like a 'grass' if I mention it, but I feel sorry for the farmer.. as well as pissed of that I wasnt the finder!(so if he was "a rich farmer", she'd have less of a problem not "grassing"?).
You should really inform the farmer someone without permission is detecting on his land if you know that to be true' and not just for the finds reasons' as mentioned in a earlier post'..possible holes left everywhere will look bad on the person the farmer knows is on the land' and that is you' and anything else metal detecting related a responsible detectorist would not do'..this person probably will do'..so again that will be directed at the person he gave permission to'.. So in my opinion you should inform the farmer'..besides why should he find what you and the farmer should be enjoying'Except as has been made clear above, it would not be the "something" that finder and landowner would "enjoy" together but the dosh from flogging it off (remember the official mantra: "only interestid in th' 'istry, not in it fer the munny").
Right back at the beginning of my writing on artefact hunting and collecting, one of the biggest barriers to getting any kind of message across was the resistance of my readers to seeing the picture as a whole. We had a group of metal detectorists, allied with their archaeologist supporters, who refused point blank to see what they were doing in the wider context of collecting of antiquities in and from other countries. "Absolutely not", they'd protest and then get sullen and quiet when you asked why not. Then we had all those collectors pretending to be collector-scholars on the other side. They "had absolutely nothing", they said, "to do with" the hoi polloi arrowhead collectors, pot-diggers and (heaven forbid) metal detectorists [if I could be bothered to look, there is a really insulting post on Unidroit-L by coin dealer Dave Welsh on this lowest of the low from which eroodite collectas like wot-he-wants-to-be absolutely separated themselves]. Again if you asked them what, in substantive terms, was the difference, they'd all go sullen and quiet. Both sides were mortally offended that somebody should draw a comparison between the two. The Brits were also angry that I was pointing out parallels between what they said and did and what American collectors said and did across the Great Cultural Divide.making the situation clear for all to see. You can't present yourself as Noel Coward if your best mates are - well, different... and it seems both sides over the past few weeks have dropped the pretence and showing their real faces at last. Steve Taylor is an ACCG hero (I believe they are going to give him one of their tinny awards like Roger Bland got next time he's in the States) Dave Welsh is the toast of the Bognor Grabbers Metal Detecting Club every first Friday of the month in the Pig and Whistle. One big happy family, united by a shared inability to address the issues.
The ACCG was formed to provide a voice for ancient coin collectors on issues that threaten the hobby. [...] [to] provide decision makers in the legislative and administrative branches of government with our own views on the complex issues surrounding preservation of historical sites [...].
I remarked upon how one of the ACCG's officers has been attempting to achieve this aim on behalf of all coin collector members. Today the world wakes to find another one. This one is very revealing of the US mindset. They think we should worship their free-speech ethos, yet are all for suppression of comment when it affects them. So we have here Mr Welsh musing about "Slaying Barford" (Thursday, September 26, 2013), not by the US preferred tactic of remote stealth attacks by political assassination drones, but by "One Detectorist's Revenge". "Steve Taylor remains the only detectorist to ever have shut Barford up, which he did for about two months in the fall of 2011".This is quite interesting, I am assuming the ACCG have full awareness of just who it is they are getting (figuratively) into bed with here. I don't expect that, as with our previous discussion of the meaning of the words il/licit, Mr Welsh's memory has retained the full facts about why this blog was hidden (not closed) for several weeks. The Warsaw Prosecutor General still has the files. At the time, readers may remember that Mr Welsh was loud in declaratively offering his support to me and my family as a result of the events following Mr Taylor's actions. Sincerity it seems is not his middle name.
"Barford himself and other anticollecting archaeologists are "off limits," and their targets are not allowed to reply in kind".But they do not, do they? I say WHY (sometimes using concrete documented examples from a forum post or You Tube video) I believe that the majority of metal detected finds are not being recovered in a responsible manner, I say WHY I believe the PAS is not achieving the aims it was set up to reach 9again sometimes using concrete examples), I say WHY there are problems with the current phrasing of the UK Treasure Act (using concrete documented examples) , and WHY we should be concerned about what is and what is not happening in Wales and Scotand (artefact hunting wise, using concrete documented examples), I say WHY there are huge problems surrounding metal detecting rallies. I say WHY these are huge problems with 1980s US laws intended (we are told) to "Implement" the 1970 UNESCO Convention (umm, using, again concrete documented examples). And much much more, I say WHY. And all we get from that sorry load is "the Barford Song" and from ACCG's Welsh "the Amazing Talking A-hole" (instead of setting out what he'd determined to be a feasible recording system for coins on the market). That is certainly not what the rest of the world would consider as "reply in kind". Not by any means.
The Court has given the government until September 27, 2013 to file its motion and the Guild a month to respond.Peter K. Tompa, 'Court Sets Briefing Schedule in Forfeiture Action' ACCG News August 07, 2013. I must say I am curious to see how the US Government answered the coin collectors' latest whingeings in this stupid battle. I hope its a massive put-down. Let us remind ourselves what this is about: 'Some of ACCG's Coins', Tuesday, 9 August 2011. Let us also note that Ehrenberg and Tompa use the "Hong Kong getout", and it's important to ask them how they think these coins got to Hong Kong and when (before or after 1930?).
"...Mr. Barford has once again revealed himself for being the fool he is. He evidently has forgotten, or never knew, or hardly cared, that countries must ask for an MOU for one to be entertained".Well, if you look at the post of mine which is being discussed, admittedly it's right down the bottom, so those of short attention span may not have got that far, it says in black on white (and I have my screen set at large font size myself):
Obviously it is not really a very effective way of implementing the Convention if it can only be achieved by Syria asking the US very nicely to help it keep looted heritage in the country, when the US has been stomping about with its World Policeman hat on for the last few weeks, threatening to blast Syria into Kingdom Come. That's just dumb.Can you see that? ACCG-Sock-puppet-Arthur in his haste to be insulting can't.
[...] big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
I've just been looking at the Syrian Red List and wondering what its actual use is.
"Should you suspect that a cultural object originating from Syria...."The people that wrote this may not have noticed (which would be a shame) but those who've spent a lot of time and some of them gone to great hardship trying to understand this trade and its connections have been fairly consistently writing for , oh... , about a year that the stuff is mostly being smuggled across the porous borders, particularly that to the north to Turkish middlemen. So unless the pot, lamp, statue or whatever has "Made in Syria" written in big letters across the base, then how is the item identified as "originating from Syria" at any other border or in any other selling place after that? Sadly the Red List is silent on that. What it needs to do is specifically highlight the types of objects that if found in an assemblage might set alarm bells ringing that the group of loose finds may be worthy of closer scrutiny as potentially Syrian (Tell Brak eye idols for example, Islamic coins of certain types with certain legends etc.)
"Should you suspect... contact ...."- so if Bobbis Scraggs sees three lamps on eBay or in Messers Grebkesh and Runn's store that look like the one in the picture, what's he supposed to do? Get onto ICOM in Paris?
"Museums, auction houses, art dealers and collectors are encouraged not to acquire such objects [ie originating from Syria] without having carefully and thoroughly researched their origin and all the relevant legal documentation."Mr Tompa labels this "objectionable" and says it "makes little sense" in today's antiquity market ("the objects on the list are presumed "guilty" until proven "innocent"..." and it breaks their little hearts).
On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon the request of the MSA, asked the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take all required procedures in collaboration with the Egyptian embassy in Jerusalem to stop the sale of 126 ancient Egyptian artefacts. These objects were put on sale in two auction halls, Eweda and Bidoon, in Jerusalem [...] Eweda is currently exhibiting 110 artefacts while Bidoon is displaying 16 others. The stolen objects include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay vessels, vases, ushabti figurines and stelae.and:
Ali Ahmed, director-general of the Repatriation of Antiquities Department in the MSA, explains that the objects in question were traced through a routine web review of all international auction halls carried out by the department periodically.All of them? So how come several dozen have items on sale exactly the same, with even less visible collecting histories and Ali Ahmed did not question them? Can we assume, since the Egyptians say "all international auction halls" and they've only questioned these two, that all the rest are deemed entirely kosher by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities? Or did they really only kick up a fuss about the ones in Israel because they are in Israel?
Here's the current offering of eighteen items by http://baidun.com/civilization/egyptian/ on Via Dolorosa Street which is a shop, not an auction house. Certainly some of them have reported collecting histories going back several decades and export licence numbers quoted. Are these the ones the Egyptians say are "stolen"? Certainly when Google made its cache on 19th September, exactly the same objects were on display on page 1, BUT a bronze Sekhmet is missing that was on the cache, made the same day, of page two. Not all these antiquities are 'as advertised' I would say. I really don't like the look of the stela-not-a-stela, but could be wrong. 
