My friend over at “Lines by Liming” turn me onto this story…..and after I read about it I have to concur with his humorous take of the story…..
Hobby Lobby? Remember them? They will not let you work for them if you happen to be gay….they find same sex marriage abhorrent…..or to terminate a pregnancy…..and they are a good Christian organization…..remember them now?
According to them…..a woman does not have a right that is Federal law……but this is somehow just fine……
The Museum of the Bible being built in DC by the Christian family behind one of the nation’s biggest arts-and-crafts retailers is coming along nicely. Maybe too nicely, per law enforcement sources, who tell the Daily Beast that the Green family—the ones whose Hobby Lobby chain claimed a big victory last year when the Supreme Court ruled it didn’t have to provide insurance for employee birth control—has been the subject of a four-year federal investigation for “illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq,” per the Daily Beast. That comprises hundreds of clay tablets, thousands of years old and inscribed in ancient cuneiform, allegedly smuggled out of the Middle East and shipped to the Greens’ Oklahoma City home base in 2011. The tablets and tens of thousands of other artifacts are for the museum, set to open in 2017 as “one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical texts, objects, and artifacts.”
The problem with the Iraq tablets is that, as museum head Cary Summers puts it, there was “incomplete paperwork” attached, though the Daily Beast points out that a simple logistical issue wouldn’t have dragged on so long. Instead, someone looking to bring in artifacts that should never have left their country of origin may have purposely undervalued the antiquities so they could be smuggled into the US. An unnamed source tells the Daily Beast the FedEx forms were marked “hand-crafted clay tiles,” with a value of around $300—which is “technically accurate, but … vastly underestimates their true worth, and … obscures their identification as the cultural heritage of Iraq,” the site notes. Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green tells the Daily Beast, “Is it possible that we have some illicit [artifacts]? That’s possible,” but adds they didn’t knowingly act illegally.
So is it okay to STEAL? That is exactly what they are doing…stealing another culture’s history…..I believe there is something written down about stealing, right?
But because they are a “good” Christian group these laws do not apply to them…is that about it?
Stealing history of a people is by far the worse type of rape…the rape of a culture…there is NO excuse for this…..religion or otherwise……There is NOTHING “Good” or “Christian” about the theft of a country’s heritage….PERIOD!
Speaking of “good” Christians…..look at what that mental midget Pat Robinson has to say about a guy who ran Guatemala…….
Robertson gushed over Ríos Montt, claiming that he was the real victim because he was targeted by liberals just for being a good Christian.
“I know Efraín Ríos Montt, who was the president there,” Robertson said. “He’s a terrific guy, he was with the El Verbo Church and they had a marvelous government but the left got after him and he couldn’t survive. They just went after him and attacked him and attacked him, the United States State Department went after him, it was terrible.”
Rios-Montt is a good person because he went to a Christian church?
Let’s look at this “good Christian”……….
“At the height of the bloodshed under Ríos Montt, reports put the number of killings and disappearances at more than 3,000 per month,” Patrick Daniels of the Guatemala Solidarity Network noted. “Such was the extent of the violence that in 1999 the UN commission concluded that it constituted acts of genocide.”
His regime specifically targeted indigenous communities with violence and displacement, and in 2013 Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide for crimes committed against the Maya Ixil community. “Hunger, systematic rape and forced displacements were all used as tools of war against the Ixil people,” the BBC reported. However, the conviction was overturned due to a legal technicality and Ríos Montt was later declared unfit to stand for retrial.
– See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-robertson-hails-guatemalan-dictator-charged-genocide#sthash.Ba0VQhpU.dpuf
Read this yesterday. Assholes. It made me think, though… What on earth are they going to fill their enormous Bible Museum with? I mean, seriously, what? The building is huge.
I am sure it will be all the mythological crap they can lay their grubby hands on…..by hook or crook…..
Sure, but have seen the floor-space available? I’m not kidding, its a massive building, and the things we’re talking about here (some clay tablets, scrolls, a bible or two) can fit in a few square meters.
Holy Crap! 430,000 sq ft of area? What the Hell are they hoping to put in this thing…the actual Ark? Are these d/bags for real?
You see? Even if they do a full scale mock-up (diorama) of Nazareth (which wasn’t even founded as a town until the early 2nd Century CE) they’d still 350,000 sq feet to fill. Now, consider that the entire Dead Sea Scroll exhibit is no larger than a family rumpus room, you have to wonder what these people were thinking.
DAMN! I bet there is some tax breaks here….I bet they are partners with that Israeli forager in Israel….Godai or something like that…he is the one that has the chest of James, Jebus’ brother and the Emerald Tablet…..and I am sure other faux Christian artifacts…..enough to fill this building….. probably not….
This is exactly why this shit got looted in the first place. Everybody knew that thefts from these national museums would wind up in the hands of The Riches, but few would say it out loud.
It’s such a classic “privatization” of valuable national resources, you’d swear this is what Rummy & Cheney had in mind when they refused to post guards at these museums. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if certain squads of thieves had been contracted weeks in advance by people with advance knowledge that the museums would not be protected. They can’t plan a war, but they sure can plan a rape & pillage.
$100 says Rummy’s home-office has some irreplaceable cultural artifacts serving as bookends, paperweights & doorstops. Cheney’s share are probably part of the altar to Satan in his bedroom closet.
These toads need to be punished for stupidity if nothing else….stealing a heritage is a crime against humanity in my book…..