Telling it Like it Isn't

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Kwame Opoku quite rightly points out in the comments to the post on Eakin's article on my other blog something I'd skipped over in my original presentation:

“Meanwhile, the looting that these cases were supposed to stop has gone on, possibly getting worse.” I do not recall anyone suggesting that the restitution of looted/stolen object would stop looting. Which government presented the cessation of looting as ground for requesting restitution of an art object?"

This is the Americans, misunderstanding the nature of the 1970 convention, through only seeing it through Article 9 and their own Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. - neither of which I suspect many of them have never read from end to end with any kind of understanding...  Of course the purpose of returning stolen property to homeowners when thieves and fences are found with it in their posession is not to "stop burglaries".

Comment to:  Hugh Eakin 'The Great Giveback', the New York Times   January 26, 2013.