See comments below.
Dave Welsh
Unidroit-L Listowner
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L
dwelsh46@cox.net
-----Original Message-----
From: ursa_one@bigpond.com [mailto:ursa_one@bigpond.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 6:29 PM
To: Ancientartifacts@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Dave Welsh
Subject: Re: [Ancientartifacts] Censorship of an Opposing View?
---- Dave Welsh <dwelsh46@cox.net> wrote:
>> ... [Paul Barford and] Trevor have been mentioned as the originators of some of the most objectionable messages.
> Really? Post me a couple, off-list.
I have no interest in any sort of private communication with you. If you have something to say to me, do so on list, in full public view.
> You obviously haven't been reading your "colleague" Kenneth's comments. I have been verbally abused and even threatened with violence......right here.
He is not my colleague. That statement should not be interpreted as meaning that I do not agree with what he has to say.
>> I ask that our long-suffering list readers take just a moment to understand who began this intensely disagreeable and wearisome controversy, and who are those presently stoking the flames.
> It's called debate and if you don't understand dry humour, that is not my problem.
You have a very singular and perverted idea of what constitutes humor. To most of the world, the inflammatory remarks you make are "fighting words." The sort of thing that formerly induced one gentleman to invite another to "take the air in the Country."
> You also bandy about the notion of free speech yet right now it doesn't seem to work for you, does it? You are suggesting censorship of views you disagree with.
No, I am suggesting that views such as yours should be treated with the utter contempt that they deserve. However, I will defend to the death your right to express your inane opinions and in the process, to demonstrate to everyone just how intellectually bankrupt your cause has become.
>> Prior to 1970 there was no public controversy regarding antiquities collecting. Objections to this time-honored avocation were mostly confined
> Time honoured avocation? Give me a break.
Time honoured since the fourteenth century. Don't ask me to give you a break, when your foolish and uninformed views radically conflict with the historical record.
>> to a relatively small number of radical archaeologists (led by Colin Renfrew) and cultural preservation interests, notable those of "source states" in Latin America, Africa and other underdeveloped countries whose citizens had no objection to exporting old cultural artifacts for money.
> And as for your previous statement that numismatics is older than archaeology, I tend to disagree.
Which clearly indicates your very shallow and uninformed perspective.
> Though we don't know exactly what was kept in the three great libraries of the classical world, I doubt they were solely concerned with coin collecting.
They were not concerned at all with coin collecting. That has nothing to do with the point, which is that collecting of Greek antiquities was very actively pursued in the Cicero to Pliny period, and was considered to be one of the key avocations conferring intellectual and cultural distinction upon a gentleman of that era, Caius Ivlivs Caesar Octavianvs Avgvstvs being only one of many examples. Augustus, as you may perhaps have heard, used to hand out notably fine examples of ancient Greek coins as favours at his dinner parties.
There are also very extensive and numerous "restoration issues," notably those of Titus, Trajan and Trajan Decius, which could hardly have been possible without a large and very well organized state collection of all previous Roman coinage.
> You've heard of Herodotus, I take it? If coinage was first minted in the 7th century BC and Herodotus wrote in the 4th century BC,
Ahem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
"Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς Hēródotos Halikarnāsseús) was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (c. 484 BC–c. 425 BC) and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture."
One would hope that your other remarks do not demonstrate a similarly appalling level of ignorance, though that is probably a lost cause.
>> In these days of cultural peace, collectors and antiquities dealers were significant supporters of the archaeological community, and often donated generously to help start or sustain archaeological expeditions. I did so myself, and my contribution (according to the leader of the project, who read my letter to the expedition staff) was helpful in keeping interest going during the most difficult times of the Mary Rose project.
>> In 1970 a very divisive international convention (the UNESCO Convention) was promulgated, and since then things have never been the same. Collectors and the antiquities dealer community on the one hand, and archaeologists, cultural authorities and allied academics on the other hand, are literally at war with each other. It is a cold war - so far no one is shooting at each other - but one that is nevertheless deadly serious. I fear that it will turn out to be like the Israel-Palestinian conflict, an uncompromising clash of ideology that can only be settled by force majeure and will go on almost indefinitely.
> Yes, while the sovereign rights of nations are acknowledged and laws are created to protect their cultural heritage.
The sovereign rights of nations do NOT extend to controlling international trade and to requiring other nations to enforce their laws.
> You are definitely on the losing team in this regard.
That is by far the most inane and uninformed remark that I have yet seen. It could not possibly be farther from the truth.
> You really do need to understand that, quite frankly.
You and your fellow travelers do, quite frankly, need to understand a few very basic principles:
1) You are in reality a tiny minority of opinion and eventually the world will realize just how isolated, poltically bankrupt and intellectually dishonest your arguments are;
2) In the arguments you and Paul Barford have advanced, you have very loosely and irresponsibly mixed fact and fiction.
>> If the so-called preservation lobby would simply accept the status quo, and agree that collectors and dealers have a right to an open licit market to provide antiquities to collectors, there would be no controversy and everyone involved could direct their efforts toward working in harmony to reform and clean up the antiquities trade.
>> The preservation lobby does not want to settle for that. Instead, they intend to work for the abolition of the antiquities trade and of antiquities collecting.
> I disagree. What are you doing to prevent the looting of archaeological material?
Very little. However, we could and would be doing a great deal if we did not have to spend all of our energies defending our time honored right to collect against this ill-conceived assault by those whose natural allies we had been up until the advent of the UNESCO Convention.
> > That really is their ultimate objective, they are working very hard and intelligently at it, and they have powerful allies in academia and in various governmental bureaus and ministries.
> See above re. sovereign nations. It's not about "power" at all.
That remark is utterly untrue, and I think that you know that.
>> It's quite clear to me that this unrelenting assault upon collecting, this unjustifiable blackguarding of collectors and dealers with the most misleading doublespeak and linguistic misdirection since the heyday of Josef Goebbels, is driven by radical socialist ideology (all artifacts belong to the State) not by realistic practical considerations. Everyone would be far better off if the effort involved had been cooperatively directed toward concrete measures directed at the causes of antiquities looting and smuggling,
> You really don't have a clue, do you Dave?
You could not possibly be farther off the mark. I not only do "have a clue," I have a very clear understanding of just how self interested and meretricious the position of the preservation lobby has become and how unscrupulous the arguments being made in its favor are.
>> not the unrealistic fantasies of archaeologists and academics who do not understand the antiquites trade, nor the views and concerns of those doing the looting.
> The "views and concerns of those doing the looting"? Will you be their mouthpiece then?
They can speak for themselves. Unlike you, I don't claim to be privy to their motives. However, I understand them well enough to realize that it is you and your ilk who simply "don't have a clue."
>> So when you see the next round of posts on this unwelcome topic, please remember that collectors and dealers are not those stoking the flames - Baford & Co. are doing that. We are their very unwilling victims, and all we are attempting to do is to defend ourselves. When they stop this unreasonable, unjustified and unproductive attack, the controversy will immediately end.
> What's this then? Boot on the other foot for a change?
I don't know what you mean by that, but if a cooperative settlement is reached, I will immediately become an activist in campaigning for reform of the antiquities trade and abolition of smuggling.
> I don't consider what I say here to be unreasonable, unjustified or unproductive. What this debate has highlighted is the almost total disregard, by some, for the cultural heritage of sovereign nations.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding on that subject. It would be lessened if everyone realized that there is NO universally agreed to moral law defining the "cultural heritage of sovereign nations." Everything is subject to international, multilateral and bilateral agreements and the implementing legislation that empowers them within a particular state.
> Mostly, it appears, through ignorance or a sense that they will lose an income.
The essential issue is that whatever obligations are imposed upon antiquities collectors and dealers must be reasonable and manageable. If that is the case, then you will find that they really are your natural allies and will constructively cooperate. At present there is what appears to be a well founded suspicion that the demands being advanced cloak an intent to strabgle the trade and make collecting impossible.
> I collect antiques but not antiquities. The only antiquities I have are a small collection of coins. There is, as you are almost certainly aware, a brisk trade in antiques. That trade has few of the problems outlined in this debate bar the passing off of reproductions as original pieces.
From a CP law perspective, everything more than 100 years old is treated equally.
Dave Welsh
Unidroit-L Listowner
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L
dwelsh46@cox.net
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