Blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas

The man who helped blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas

the men spent three days planting explosives around the statues. Then wires were laid all the way to a nearby mosque from where the charges were detonated amid shouts of "Allah Akbar". [...]  When the statues were finally destroyed, the Taliban were celebrating. "They were firing weapons into the air, they were dancing and they brought nine cows to slaughter as a sacrifice," he says. 

Ignorant barbarian ragheads. 

Cuno on ISIS and Repatriation

Respected Getty Director J. Cuno makes the case that "far from lending support for repatriation as suggested by UNESCO's allies in the archaeological lobby, the rise of ISIS argues for dispersion of cultural assets in order to save them!"

To the Editor:

The recent attacks on the ancient cities of Nimrud and Hatra in Iraq underscore a tragic reality. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization encourages — and provides an institutional instrument for — the retention of antiquities within the borders of the modern state that claims them. That state, very sadly, also has the authority to sell them on the illegal market, damage them or destroy them.

Until Unesco changes its basic position on this issue, antiquities will remain at risk. The world can only be grateful for the earlier regime of “partage,” which allowed for the sharing of Assyrian antiquities with museums worldwide that could preserve them.

This unconscionable destruction is an argument for why portable works of art should be distributed throughout the world and not concentrated in one place. ISIS will destroy everything in its path.

JAMES CUNO
President and Chief Executive
The J. Paul Getty Trust
Los Angeles

Obama’s efforts against ISIS criticized as ‘a PR strategy, not a geopolitical war-fighting strategy’

Six months after Obama promised to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the self- proclaimed Islamic caliphate and while ISIS vows to consolidate its rule, Obama’s plan to deal with this major security crisis is being criticized on both political and military grounds (David J. Lynch, "Obama’s efforts against ISIS criticized as ‘a PR strategy, not a geopolitical war-fighting strategy’", Bloomberg News March 11, 2015).

As the U.S. ponders its next steps, Iran is solidifying its role as the dominant influence on Iraq, joining Shiite militias in a battle for Tikrit, a Sunni-majority city about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. [...] More than 2,600 air strikes by the U.S., and its European and Arab allies, have killed about 8,500 ISIS warriors and destroyed more than 1,000 tanks and vehicles in Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. Central Command and the administration. The Pentagon estimates current ISIS manpower at 25,000 to 31,000, with about two-thirds of that in Syria. “The military effort is chugging along; there is progress there,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst. [...] Obama’s critics say the president’s method of making decisions is compounding the difficulties of the anti-ISIS effort. [...]  “Decision-making is concentrated in a little clique around the president whose members are without profound political- diplomatic experience of their own,” said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “They’re creatures of the Washington bubble.” That bubble has expanded over the years into a sizable bureaucracy: 

Meanwhile, the threat spreads. Groups pledging allegiance to ISIS have sprouted in Nigeria, Egypt’s Sinai province, Libya, and Afghanistan, where almost 11,000 U.S. troops remain.

Trapped in a Moslem Prison over Tourist Souvenir

'Trapped in a Turkish prison', Chicago Tribune Mar 18 2015.

Here's the vacation nightmare of nightmares: Thrown in a Turkish prison for a crime you didn't commit. So it went last November for Martin O'Connor, who visited Istanbul with a group from Chicago's Old St. Patrick's Church and unwittingly ran afoul of Turkey's broad, punitive restrictions on the removal of antiquities. O'Connor simply behaved like a tourist. He visited Istanbul's spectacular Grand Bazaar ...

where, to cut a long story short, he bought a sword for $500 (which he admits was a bargained down price):

"O'Connor, a history buff, and the shop owner surmised it was from the early 1900s — relatively new for a country where civilizations can be traced back to the Stone Age. "'I wouldn't have bought anything that was really old,' O'Connor said. 'I wanted something I could buy as a memento.' "Two days later, on Nov. 20, the couple arrived at Ataturk Airport for their flight home and went through the metal detectors set up near the entrance. Maureen O'Connor froze when two security guards pulled the sword out of a red suitcase containing all their souvenirs. "'I was like, 'They think we're going to bring that on the plane!' she recalled. 'I said, 'No, no, no, we are checking that.' "That wasn't the problem, though it took some time for the O'Connors to figure that out because of the language barrier. Eventually a woman who spoke a bit of English explained that Martin O'Connor had to go with police while they sent the sword across town to the Topkapi Palace Museum to determine whether the weapon could be exported." 

They were detained, Mr Connor spent some time in a putrid Turkish jail cell, but finally:

 "It wasn't until more than a month later that the court heard from a weapons expert with the national museum who confirmed that the first inspector had been wrong: The weapon was a standard-issue 'bombardier's sword' from the 20th century, not an antiquity, court records show. "'It is not a cultural property that should be protected,' the expert's report said. 'These kinds of properties (carpet, rug, and wooden properties) can be taken out of the country with the relevant museum's permission.'"

Turkey's aggressive retentive policies on "their" cultural heritage are not making them freinds with the American People. How long does it take to find an "expert" in that country that can correctly identify a common sword?

China Comes to America

Peter Tompa observes:

The Wall Street Journal reports on Chinese art collectors coming to America to buy up art long held in this country.  The article also notes that American collectors became repositories of knowledge about Chinese art lost in China itself during Communism's darkest periods.  Left unsaid is the impact of U.S. import restrictions on the ability of Americans to replace that which has been repatriated by sale to China.

Instead of thanking American collectors for their selfless efforts to preserve the Chinese heritage for mankind, the Chinese and their yellow-commie-loving rabid anti-collecting zealot compadres continue to penalise them.

Latest Tragedy

As our man in Washington, Peter Tompa, observes, journalists of  the Economist do their best to explain the iconoclasm of ISIS.  They only fail by repeating disinformation blaming looting at Apamea on ISIS rather than the odious Assad regime.  Kate FitzGibbon, writing for the Committee for Cultural Policy, reports on the bulldozing of  Nimrud.  Meanwhile, what of the culprits?  Reports are now appearing in Arab sources suggesting that local men may have been responsible for the destruction at the Mosul Museum.  If so, that would once again raise the question whether the "state owns all" approach favored by the archeology lobby inexorably leads to the trash the past model of ISIS and others.

Better Bulldozed than SAFE in a Western Museum?

It would seem that certain "archeologist" bloggers think that antiquities are better bulldozed than Saved for Everyone (SAFE) in weste between the actions of collectors and museums and the iconoclasts of ISIS.They actually seem to prefer destruction of artifacts, whether by natural causes as they lie interred exposed to rot and corrosion, or by overt actions of barbarous terrorists, to their possession by private collectors. They hate private collectors and collecting and have a compulsive need to find ways to blame everything on them as being at least partly or indirectly responsible. Pathetic and nasty people. What does it take to make them realise that our heritage is safest in our museums?