Academic Fanatics at Large

The press nowadays is full of a veritable sandstorm of pronouncements claiming controversially that the sale of antiquities looted by ISIS is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, second only to their revenues from looted oil. The archaeological lobby has mounted a concerted press campaign to hype such claims in an effort to stampede the UN and national governments into establishing a world-wide ban on the international sale of antiquities.The whole campaign of the cultural property crusaders "reminds one of the yellow journalism of years gone by and appears now as a very thinly veiled attempt to criminalize the collecting of ancient coins and portable antiquities.  Those responsible for this sort of baseless vilification are really little better than the looters they decry.  Their agenda-driven ideological fervor is as irrational as it is fanatical". We must put a stop to this as it threatens  the rule of democratic law and our fundamental freedoms.