Day: October 13, 2021

Closing Thought–13Oct21

I have been writing about the thieves in the Greene family, owners of Hobby Lobby…..they have been stealing artifacts to be displayed in their Museum of the Bible……

A Sucker Born Every Minute

BUSTED! (Again)

Finally Hobby Lobby has been forced to return their stolen artifact….Epic of Gilgamesh…..

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and bought by Hobby Lobby in 2014 is now officially Iraq’s property again. The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was formally returned at a repatriation ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution Thursday, CNN reports. Fareed Yasseen, Iraq’s ambassador to the US, told the ceremony that Iraqis are deeply attached to their ancient artifacts. “Our history is what makes us. We’re an old country,” he said. Our original story from July 27 follows:

 

Hobby Lobby has agreed to forfeit a 3,500-year-old clay tablet considered the property of the Iraqi government, which it bought for $1.6 million in 2014. The retail chain purchased the 5-by-6-inch rare cuneiform tablet from a London auction house, which offered up a provenance letter claiming the tablet was found in a box of ancient bronze fragments purchased in an auction in 1981. That same letter had been used to sell the so-called Gilgamesh Dream Tablet—one of 12 tablets found in the ruined library of an Assyrian king in Nineveh, northern Iraq, in 1853—at other times. It was also fake. The uncleaned tablet had in fact been illegally imported to the US by an antiquities dealer in 2003, reports CNBC. After realizing what he had, the dealer sold the tablet with the false provenance letter in 2007.

Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the tablet—written in Akkadian, and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest known works of literature—which it had purchased in 2014. US authorities had seized it from Washington, DC’s Museum of the Bible, funded by the family of Hobby Lobby founder David Green, in 2019. It is now stored in Brooklyn, New York, according to a Monday court filing.

Jacquelyn Kasulis, acting US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, called it “an important milestone on the path to returning this rare and ancient masterpiece of world literature to its country of origin,” noting the office is “committed to combating the black-market sale of cultural property and the smuggling of looted artifacts.” Hobby Lobby agreed to return thousands of ancient Iraqi artifacts in 2017. Per CBS News, it also agreed to a $3 million fine, saying it “imprudently relied on dealers and shippers who, in hindsight, did not understand the correct way to document and ship these items.”

I still think a fine is not appropriate for the theft of culture and history…..someone needs to do major jail time…..

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Why Would Anyone Take A Horse Pill?

That is the question that has plagued me since I heard bout those people that would prefer to take a horse laxative over being vaccinated…..those that ignore medical advice and do something stupid like a pill designed for animals.

How do I get into the head of such a person?

After trying to explain this stupidity I still had no grasp on the thinking of these people.

Then I read this piece…..

Some Americans who are reluctant to get vaccinated believe they are living through a very different pandemic — one where the approved Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective and dangerous, and where a long list of “miracle cures,” ivermectin among them, are critical to patients’ health and safety.

From the outside, these positions can seem not just dangerous but incoherent. What would lead a person to say they won’t take a vaccine approved by federal regulators, then take an off-label medication because they read about it online?

Of course, not all Americans who are reluctant to get vaccinated have embraced supposed miracle cures: The reasons that people give for not getting a Covid-19 vaccine are varied and complex. But over the past year, among some refusers, a community of intense vaccine denialism has developed and created a sort of psychological scaffolding to support their views. As a group, the most fervent vaccine deniers construct and perpetuate an alternative narrative of the pandemic. And when inconvenient facts — from a news report to a friend’s or relative’s decision to get vaccinated — challenge that narrative, they give them a place to take refuge.

This phenomenon has its origins in America’s political polarization. One of the best predictors of whether someone is resistant to getting the Covid-19 vaccine is whether they identify as a Republican, and we know those partisan bonds are powerful. But they are not sufficient to explain the intransigence. Most Republicans have gotten the vaccine by now, but about 12 percent of Americans say they will never get vaccinated under any circumstances. (Roughly six in 10 of those people are Republicans, but a small minority of Democrats also say they won’t get the vaccine.)

It’s this community of hardcore refusers that have closed ranks and created an insular world meant to perpetuate their beliefs.

https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22686147/covid-19-vaccine-betadine-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-trump-conspiracy

An interesting article but it still did not help me to get my head around the ignorance that is running rampant in the country.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”