This week's front page Washington Post article that again features the discredited claim that looted antiquities are the "second most important commercial activity [for ISIS] after oil sales" [along with a misstatement of the impact of the "1970 Rule"] raises important questions:
(1) Is the article meant to prompt action on the improved, but still flawed HR 1493 in the Senate?
and, if so,
(2) Is ASOR's $600,000 State Department funded "monitoring and global awareness campaign" really a backdoor means to lobby on that bill, which uses the ongoing tragedy in Iraq and Syria as a justification for a new State Department bureaucracy aimed at fostering further "coordination" with the same insiders associated with the archaeological lobby who already dominate things?
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1 comment:
Hi Peter:
As in the UK, a minority of well connected archaeologists have access to the corridors of power and I often wonder, who blows who, but given the dearth of anti-collecting legislation I'm somehow reminded of Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind.
Regards
John Howland
England
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