Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi is Dead. We Got Him

Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019, in the Situation Room of the White House monitoring developments as U.S. Special Operations forces close in on notorious ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound in Syria with a mission to kill or capture the terrorist. He died cowardly like a dog in a cave. The world should already know that terrorists cannot outlast or outmatch the commitment of the U.S. counter-terrorism apparatus. We will not waiver in destroying terrorist leaders wherever they hide.  May God bless the men and women in our military who protect us and make us proud every day as they continue the fight against terrorism.

The Sleeping Lady of Malta.

The Sleeping Lady of Malta. This beautiful Neolithic sculpture c.5,500 BCE is likely a personification of death and the eternity of the afterlife.

Turkey Wants US to 'Protect' it's Heritage, but Bombs Ancient Sites

Turkey bombs an ancient temple greatly damaging it, and floods another ancient site for a dam, but it is seeking a MOU with the US that will supposedly help “protect” cultural patrimony.

Turkish bombing damages 3,000-year-old temple in Syria, PanARMENIAN.Net Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish forces have partially destroyed a 3,000-year-old temple in northern Syria, according to a monitoring group and the Syrian regime, Telegraph reports. The neo-Hittite temple of Ain Dara was built in around 1300 BC and is famous for its elaborate images of lions and sphinxes. The temple was at least 60 per cent destroyed by Turkish forces as they attacked the Kurdish-held area of Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

Slim Public Support for MOU's with Yemen and Morocco

Slim Public Support for MOU's with Yemen and Morocco (CPO 16 Oct 2019)
Slim Public Support for MOU's with Yemen and Morocco The docket for the upcoming CPAC meeting on proposed MOU's with Morocco and Yemen indicates that 170 comments were received about one or both of these MOU's. The vast majority of comments came in response to an appeal from JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East & North Africa) against State Department efforts to recognize the rights of authoritarian MENA countries to the religious and cultural artifacts of their displaced Jewish populations.

Coin collector-numismatic trade comments were way down (to approximately 10) from 100's in the past, no doubt due to frustration about the likelihood of numismatic logic moving the State Department, as well as the fact that the obscure coin types found in these countries are mainly of interest to specialists.

Archaeologists and archaeological advocacy groups were only represented with approximately 10 comments as well, which should again confirm that there is very little actual public support for these MOU's.

Oddly, the "Antiquities Coalition" which has worked with the Yemeni Government on this MOU apparently failed to submit any public comments. Is it possible the Coalition has already received assurances that the MOU's are a "done deal?"

'How Assad's man got a priceless antiquity out of Canada and into Syria

A man Ottawa deemed unfit to be honorary consul is being celebrated in Damascus for ‘repatriating’ a 5th century Byzantine mosaic to Bashar’s blood-drenched regime (Terry Glavin, 'How Assad's man got a priceless antiquity out of Canada and into Syria' Macleans.ca Oct 12, 2019)

Waseem Ramli, the notorious Montreal businessman whose diplomatic status as honorary consul for the blood-drenched Baathist regime in Syria [...] walked out of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a priceless 1,820-kilogram late 5th century Byzantine Christian mosaic measuring roughly 3.5 meters by 2.8 meters originally from the vicinity of Hama on the Orontes River, [...]  But Canadian officials raised no objections at all to surrendering the Early Christian artwork to the Syrian Arab Republic, Maclean’s has learned. [...] It’s now at the Syrian National Museum in Damascus. The massive mosaic came from a shipment of 82 mosaic fragments that the Syrian regime exported illegally in the late 1990s, likely in connivance with the smugglers themselves. The collection was intercepted by the RCMP and Canada Customs officials, and the artifacts were eventually returned to Syria, except for the Hama mosaic. Although it had been cut into two pieces, apparently for ease in transport, the mosaic was so magnificent that McGill University professor John Fossey, the Montreal museum’s curator of Greek art at the time, managed to arrange a loan of the work for display at the museum. The loan was extended several times, starting in 2004. [...]  On Dec. 29 last year, Ramli walked into the museum, presented a letter from the Syrian government, and demanded that the museum surrender the Hama mosaic to him.  [...] There was a bit of a rigmarole, but Ramli’s demands were all met within six months. [...]  Global Affairs Canada didn’t give the museum a choice. Nobody said no. Nobody even said, hold on, maybe we should just say no, this belongs to the Syrian people, not to the criminal regime in Damascus. So Goldfarb and his colleagues had little option but to comply with Ramli’s demands and hand over the Hama mosaic.

Shocking Satellite Images reveal China is Destroying Uighur Family Graveyards

More Chinese disrespect for minority communities. More cultural heritage groups need to call China out. Dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in Xinjiang in north-west China in two years, investigation finds (AFP Satellite images reveal China is destroying Muslim graveyards where generations of Uighur families are buried 9 October 2019):

China is destroying burial grounds where generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group's identity in Xinjiang. In just two years, dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in the northwest region, according to an AFP investigation with satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance. Some of the graveyards have been turned into car parks and even playgrounds, as the pictures show. Others were cleared with little care. In Shayar county, AFP journalists saw unearthed human bones left discarded in three sites. In other sites, tombs that were reduced to mounds of bricks lay scattered in cleared tracts of land. The images appeared as Xinjiang authorities this week claimed their officials were carrying out 'normal' tasks after shocking footage purported to show hundreds of shackled and blindfolded Muslim prisoners being transferred.

Officials claim urban development and the 'standardisation' of old graves are the reasons for the bulldozing But Uighurs say the mass destruction is part of a state crackdown to control every element of their lives An estimated one million mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up into re-education camps.

Shocking 'before and after' photos here.

Proposed MOU with Yemen

Yemen’s gov’t and Combat Looting wants the US to repatriate cultural artifacts into an environment where they can be bombed into dust by Yemen’s Saudi allies. Will MoU promote “cultural property protection” or “destruction?”

Yemen is involved in a three way civil war. Its government and its Saudi allies stand accused of intentionally targeting cultural sites, including bombing the Dhamar Museum into dust. This raises questions whether the Yemeni government has "unclean hands" and whether artifacts should be repatriated to a war zone. There are also other moral issues related to whether the United States Government should recognize Yemeni government rights to artifacts of displaced Jewish and Christian populations. Under the circumstances, one has to wonder whether the short comment period is designed to keep potentially embarrassing comments about the merits of the Yemeni request to a minimum.

The international art market as cultural bogeyman

Cmte Cultural Policy ‏ @CCPArtCulture Sep 30

The international art market as cultural bogeyman, Part 1: How confusion, complacency and politics play their part by Ivan Macquisten @IvanMacquisten Read more here: https://culturalpropertynews.org/the-international-art-market-as-cultural-bogeyman-part-1/ … Peter Tompa notes: this article hits all the major issues facing collecting. If you are a collector or interested in cultural property issues, well worth a read.