Thursday, June 19, 2014

Debunking Wild Claims About Collectors Supporting Terrorism

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's former chief of staff and current mayor of Chicago, famously said, " You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."  So, its not surprising the archaeological lobby is cynically exploiting the rise of the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq to try to justify a further clamp down on collectors

Thankfully, others with no such axe to grind have exposed the dubious nature of such claims.  First, former senior Homeland Security official Jim McAndrew debunked such claims at a recent public forum.   And now Derek Fincham, who not generally known as a friend of the antiquities trade, raises his own questions about the motivations behind the recent spate of stories on the subject.

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