Oil, not Antiquities

Cultural Property expert Peter Tompa also covers the ISIS debacle:

"ISIS Funding Narrative Begins Unraveling in Mainstream Media" The New Yorker has rightly questioned whether looted antiquities are really an important funding source for ISIS as our State Department and the archaeological lobby have claimed.  Hopefully, other mainstream media will follow.

John Howland from England notes that the English worked it out earlier than the federal government:

At last! Someone with the balls to question the 'academics'. ISIS get its money from what is termed 'hot oil' and that's why the UK's Royal Air Force is now bombing ISIS oil wells to oblivion. Were this not the case one suspects that the US and UK would be bombing the crap out of heritage sites, but ISIS has already done this. I expect any time soon to see the names of those in academe who proliferated the stolen collectables nonsense in the public domain, followed by a series of academic post becoming vacant. Ha Ha!

See "British airstrikes hit Islamic State oil fields, aim to deal 'real blow" Fox News December 03, 2015.

Significantly, another source gives the position of the "Omar Oilfield" mentioned as the targeted area as being right next to where that antiquities trader with his faked invoices lived. The anti-collecting story is being unravelled fast.