Day: December 9, 2021

Closing Thought–09Dec21

It is common knowledge that the US is trying to restart the Iran Nuke deal that was junked by the Orange Man from Florida….and yes there is still opposition mostly from that piss ant nation of Israel.

They have ordered the US to immediately halt the Iranian talks…..

Israel stepped up its opposition to the Iran nuclear deal talks on Thursday and demanded that the US and other world powers put an immediate end to the negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett delivered the message in a call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Iran is carrying out nuclear blackmail as a negotiating tactic, and this should be answered by the immediate halt to negotiations and the implementation of tough steps by the world powers,” Bennett said, according to a statement released by his office.

Israel claims that Iran has no intention of reducing its nuclear activity back to JCPOA levels and is only trying to buy time to develop a nuclear bomb. But there’s no evidence to support the claim, and Iran has only taken steps to advance its nuclear program in the face of pressure from the US and Israel, and a JCPOA revival would reverse those steps.

Iran has said Israel is spreading lies about Iran to “poison” the negotiations. When the talks first resumed Monday, Israeli media reported that Israel warned the US Tehran is about to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level needed for weapons-grade. But again, there was no evidence to back up the claim.

With the demands from Israeli officials to halt negotiations come threats. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Thursday that attacking Iran must always be an option for Israel, even if the country has to act alone.

Israel has taken extreme measures to sabotage diplomacy between the US and Iran in the past. In April, when the first rounds of negotiations began, Israel carried out an attack on Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility. Tehran responded to the incident by starting to enrich some uranium at 60 percent, which Israel now claims is evidence the Iranians are racing towards a bomb.

Say what?

Ordered to halt the talks?

Who the Hell is Israel?

Some little piss ant nation that loves bullying their neighbors…..and the US snuggles up to this nation all in the name of political donations.

On a side note….after decades of fear mongering about Iran by war-hawks and Israel the CIA has issued a statement….

CIA Director William Burns said the US does not have evidence that Iran has decided to weaponize its nuclear program.

The CIA “doesn’t see any evidence that Iran’s Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] has made a decision to move to weaponize,” Burns told The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council, The Times of Israel reported.

Burns’ admission comes a week after the US and Iran resumed indirect negotiations in Vienna to revive the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. The latest round of talks concluded Friday and are expected to resume this Thursday.

Israeli officials have been claiming that Iran is only trying to buy time with the negotiations as it secretly develops a nuclear bomb. For decades now, Israel has been making similar warnings, but Iran has always insisted it does not want nuclear weapons and Israel is currently the only nuclear-armed state in the region.

Time for the US to step up and tell Israel to STFU…

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Uneven Justice

Let’s say smugglers get artifacts for me and I am apprehended then I do time….but that is me for I am a ‘nobody’….but if a rich guy gets caught with stolen artifacts he/she gets a slap on the hand and a fine that they can afford without a problem.

Think Hobby Lobby and their search for artifacts for the Museum of the Bible…I have covered this story on several occasions…..https://lobotero.com/2021/10/13/closing-thought-13oct21/

Another story of this uneven justice…..

A New York billionaire will face no criminal charges after surrendering 180 antiquities worth $70 million, which authorities say were stolen from 11 countries. The items had been looted from Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey, and trafficked by 12 criminal smuggling networks before appearing on the international art market, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which began investigating Michael Steinhardt’s “acquisition, possession, and sale of more than 1,000 antiquities since at least 1987” in February 2017, per CNBC.

The 81-year-old hedge fund pioneer and philanthropist admitted that he lacked provenance documentation for items in his collection after receiving a subpoena for the information relating to a statue of a bull’s head, stolen during the Lebanese Civil War, which was valued at $12 million, per ABC News and CNBC. “His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection,” District Attorney Cy Vance said Monday.

The DA’s office said Steinhardt knew or should have known the 180 purchased items—including a 2,400-year-old ceremonial vessel in the shape of a stag’s head, believed to have come from Turkey, valued at $3.5 million; a 3,400-year-old larnax coffin from the Greek island of Crete, worth $1 million; and a 50BC fresco from Herculaneum (now Ercolano), Italy, worth $1 million—were stolen. But Steinhardt avoided criminal charges in agreeing to forfeit the items in exchange for what Vance described as an “unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities,” per the New York Times. Vance said the agreement meant the stolen items would be “returned expeditiously to their rightful owners” without the risk of exposing witnesses.

Another fine example of just the wealthy can get away with anything.

This is pathetic….I do not care how old this a/hole is….he knew full well what he was doing and does not deserve any quarter for the theft of a nation’s culture and history….the maximum penalties should apply equally.

I say make an example of this soulless SOB…..

Some good news on stolen artifacts….

A small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago was formally returned to Iraq on Tuesday, following a September repatriation ceremony in Washington, DC. The AP reports the $1.7 million cuneiform tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, is one of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature and one of the oldest religious texts. It was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal.

The tablet was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the US in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in Washington. Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet from the museum in September 2019. A federal judge in New York approved the forfeiture of the tablet in July this year.

 

On Tuesday, the tablet was handed over to Iraqi authorities in a ceremony at Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the presence of UNESCO officials as well as Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Hassan Nadhem, Iraq’s minister of culture, tourism and antiquities. “We were able to recover about 17,926 artifacts from several countries, namely America, Britain, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands,” Hussein said. UNESCO has described the process of recovering the valuable artifact as the culmination of decades of cooperation between the US and Iraq, both of which are signatories to the UNESCO Convention of 1970.

The Greene family of Hobby Lobby fame knew these artifacts were stolen by the they care not for they are wealthy and think that laws do not apply to them…..they deserve more than a fine and a slap on the wrist for their theft of a nation’s history….but they skated out because once again the wealthy have a different set of laws that they are held to…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”