Tuesday 13 October 2020

Colonial Delusions from a Dead Chicken


The Global Heritage Alliance ("GHA") is pleased to support a proposed renewal of a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with the Republic of Greece with the following provisos". The accompanying document raises a number of questions. The first is why was it written by a fourteen-year old? At least that's what the language suggests. The second question that comes to my mind is who do these people think they are? Obviously Trumpists, but MAGA assumes that America needs to be "made great AGAIN". This lot clearly imagine it's still 1967 and America is in a position to set an example and tell others how they should behave. No. America is now nothing but a shadow of what it once was, and largely a very bad JOKE and it's people like the members of this so-called GHA with its dead-chlorinated-chicken logo that makes it so. Look at this:
GHA makes the following additional suggestions to be written into the MOU to protect Greece’s cultural patrimony and facilitate lawful trade. We believe these are reasonable requests given the budget shortfalls facing the Greek cultural establishment due to ongoing economic problems: [...]:
Deaccession and sell off duplicates from museum stores to foreigners and wealthy Greek collectors 
Give tax breaks to individuals that donate money to Greek museums.
Require foreign archaeologists to pay a user fee for the privilege of excavating in the country, but as a quid pro quo reestablish the historic practice of partage.
Require foreign archaeologists to police their own sites when they are not being actively excavated. [...] CPAC should take a proactive stance on this issue and recommend that any revised MOU require that U.S. archaeological missions get such plans approved as a condition of continuing to work in the country.

The US has a whole range of shadow companies willing to provide security at very competive rates, and shooting a few Greek civilians that come too close should not be a problem for them.  

They also suggest that the Greeks "establish a legal market for ancient artifacts that can be taxed".
Now one wonders what kind of school the fourteen-year old author of this text goes to that he's learnt that you can "protect a country's cultural patrimony" by flogging it off, and making it a venue for the same tax-dodge-facilitating corruption that we see happening in US museums.

The icing on the cake, the suggestion that "if we are to help you, you must do this":
"establish a recording system akin to the Treasure Act and PAS".
The what? Why? Are the Greeks going to listen to this? 

So far there are 22 documents in the docket, some seem to be blank 'tests', most of the rest are coineys saying the same turgid cut-and-paste stuff they always say. I did not bother reading it.

No comments:

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.