Month: December 2021

Closing Thought–14Dec21

By now anyone interested in the abortion fight knows that SCOTUS has dealt another blow to the issue…..now the Dems, at least in California, have taken to playing the game that was invested by the GOP….this time it is the issue of guns.

“If [Texas] can ban abortion and endanger lives, [California] can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.” That’s Gavin Newsom’s latest stance, and one he intends to try to turn into law. The California governor made his announcement Saturday on the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling the previous day that allowed Texas’ so-called heartbeat bill, which bars abortions after about six weeks, to stand. That law isn’t directly enforceable by the state, but instead uses a “novel enforcement mechanism,” per CNN, which allows private citizens to file civil lawsuits against doctors or clinic operators who help women get abortions. Newsom wants Californians to have the same opportunity to sue, but for an entirely different reason.

If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way,” Newsom said in a Saturday evening statement, referring to a recent decision by a federal court that overturned a California ban on assault rifles, per the Los Angeles Times. The federal judge in that case made the assault weapon-Swiss Army knife comparison, calling guns like the AR-15 “a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” the paper noted in August.

Newsom wants the new California bill he’s proposing to function in the same way as Texas’ law, in regard to private citizens being able to wield it to file complaints against manufacturers, sellers, or distributors of assault weapons, as well as ghost gun parts and kits. The governor said in his statement that he’s instructed his staff to work in tandem with the state Legislature and Attorney General Rob Bonta on a law that would allow citizens to ask for statutory damages “of at least $10,000 per violation plus costs and attorney’s fees.”

“If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” Newsom added. The Times reports that the earliest the Legislature could start the ball rolling on this bill would be Jan. 3, when lawmakers come back from the holidays. After that, even if a bill passed, it would face “near-certain legal challenges,” the paper notes.

I am pleased that a Dem has grown a pair to draft a direction…..it will probably go nowhere especially with the legal hacks we have on the Supreme Court….but at least it was a try and I approve of the attempt.

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Those Civilian Deaths

There is a growing problem in our many many wars and conflicts…..civilian deaths.

Our ever expanding use of drones to attack ‘enemy’ positions the number of civilian deaths has risen…..for every single ‘bad guy’ taken out by a drone strike there is the chance that innocent civilians will be killed as well.

With every report that gets out about these deaths the US pledges to investigate the deaths…..this is to placate critics and in the end nothing is actually accomplished and the killers go unpunished.

The question needs to be asked if the US Pentagon be a good and good faith investigator?

Some of us say no…..

U.S. Central Command reported late on Friday a U.S. drone strike in Idlib, Syria against a senior member of al-Qaida, rather than against a member of the self-described Islamic State  — the ostensible legal justification the United States is even in Syria. Even more interestingly, CENTCOM claimed it “immediately self-reported” one civilian casualty that it is investigating. 

But U.S. policymakers should not defer to the military’s investigatory promises given its history of covering up or not sufficiently accounting for civilian casualties. In fact, the Associated Press has since reported that the strike wounded a family of 6, including a 10-year-old child.

It’s no coincidence the CENTCOM appears to have proactively taken responsibility for this latest civilian casualty. This incident came at the end of a week of rightful public uproar after the New York Times revealed the U.S. military’s apparent cover up of an airstrike killing 80 civilians in eastern Syria in 2019. Rather than allowing more exhaustive investigative journalism to uncover its destructive and deadly actions in Syria, it appears CENTCOM is hoping that announcing an investigation will stave off an intense media frenzy like the one following its botched August 29  drone strike in Kabul during the withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed Zemari Ahmadi, a civilian electrical engineer, and his family. 

We can’t trust the US military to investigate civilian casualties

As I was writing this draft more news has popped up……

The Pentagon won’t discipline any US personnel involved in the mistaken drone strike that killed 10 civilians in Afghanistan in August. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accepted recommendations on the issue that did not include punishment, press secretary John Kirby said Monday. The recommendations from two commanders were mostly procedural, the Hill reports, and Kirby said, “There was no overt recommendation made by either specific to accountability and any punishment for anyone.” An independent Pentagon review had come to a similar conclusion, saying there was no evidence of negligence. Seven of the 10 people killed were children.

The aid organization that one of the victims worked for immediately criticized the decision, per CNBC. Nutrition & Education International said the US hasn’t kept its promises to provide compensation to the victims’ families and get them out of the country. “How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people, and hold no one accountable in any way?” asked the group’s president, Dr. Steven Kwon. Zemerai Ahmadi, who was killed along with his family, worked for the organization for 15 years. US commanders mistakenly thought he was an ISIS-K operative when they ordered the strike in Kabul.

“What we saw here was a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events,” Kirby said Monday, “not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership.” Austin previously had called the drone attack a “horrible mistake,” though the Defense Department at first called it a “righteous strike.” US operations have killed hundreds of civilians, at least, in war zones over the past 20 years, rarely holding an individual responsible, per the Hill.

Seriously?  Just how accurate and fair is the perp given control of a death investigation?

American exceptionalism is a self-forged permission slip to engage in the kind of malicious behavior that the US would condemn from any other nation.

No one cares about the deaths of civilians…..as long as we have our Gummi vitamins and social influencers then all is well with the world.

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Closing Thought–13Dec21

“Birds Aren’t Real!”

This has been a trending meme on Twitter for months.

Want more information?

Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? No? It’s probably because birds aren’t real but rather government drones used to spy on you and steal your information. That’s according to the Birds Aren’t Real movement, and a movement it is: hundreds of thousands of young people are now on board. Some will even tell you that woodpeckers are fluent in Morse code. Thankfully, it’s all a joke, as the 23-year-old founder of Birds Aren’t Real finally admits in a New York Times interview. “Yes, we have been intentionally spreading misinformation for the past four years, but it’s with a purpose,” says Peter McIndoe of Memphis, Tenn. “It’s about holding up a mirror to America in the internet age.”

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. McIndoe was in downtown Memphis in January 2017 when he spotted a women’s march and counterprotesters in support of then-President Donald Trump. He grabbed a poster, flipped it over and wrote “Birds Aren’t Real,” then began spouting stuff about a government cover-up. “It was a spontaneous joke, but it was a reflection of the absurdity everyone was feeling,” he tells the Times. The episode went viral, drawing in Generation Z, which grew up in “a world overrun with misinformation,” per the Times. McIndoe knew a thing or two about that himself, having been homeschooled in rural Arkansas, where he was taught that “evolution was a massive brainwashing plan by the Democrats and Obama was the Antichrist.”

He began embodying the character he’d created, not faltering once in a 30-minute interview with Audubon in 2018; paid actors to pose as bird truthers; and built a fake history of the movement with friend Connor Gaydos. It fooled the public and local media, but members knew the reality. One describes the movement as “fighting lunacy with lunacy,” per the Times. Another says it’s “more about media literacy.” Or as Audubon described it: “a chimera of conspiracies that wraps satire, modern insecurities, and internet culture into a successful marketing scheme.” Merchandise sales not only cover McIndoe and Gaydos’ living expenses but support the movement overall. As McIndoe tells the New Statesman, it’s “a safe space of sorts, for people to come together and laugh at the absurdity of the world that we’re in right now.”

This illustrates the stupidity that social media creates…..and the stupidity that people are willing to accept.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Do You Remember Ukraine?

There is a civil war going on in Ukraine…..basically because of a democratic election was overthrown with help from the US (so much for the sanctity of elections) just because we did not agree with friends that Ukraine had made.

And the American people remain clueless at the situation and the consequences…..

For years the situation in Ukraine has festered and the US keeps scratching the scab off the social sore…..and Biden has been at the heart of the social unrest…..

Seven years after President Biden and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, played key roles in carrying out the 2014 putsch that toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president and ignited a deadly civil war, the U.S. and NATO have escalated hostilities toward Russia in Ukraine and in the Black Sea. As the conflict between the US and Russia over Ukraine threatens to erupt into a hot war, and neocons on both sides of the US political spectrum exhort Biden to get tough on Russia, the question arises whether Americans understand the recent history of Ukraine, particularly the US role in causing and intensifying the conflict, the fascist influences that pervade Ukraine’s military, and the anti-democratic actions of Ukraine’s current President Zelensky.

The civil war in Ukraine has festered for seven years and exacerbated tensions between Russia and the West. The situation has markedly deteriorated since Biden was installed as president in January 2021. This is not unexpected given Biden’s long history of aggression toward Russia and US interference in Ukraine, a nation that borders Russia but lies 5600 miles distant from the US Prior to the US 2020 election, Biden regularly leveled epithets at Russia’s President Putin, denounced Russia as the US’ greatest threat, and assured the Council on Foreign Relations that he supported NATO enlargement, particularly membership for Ukraine. Once Biden took office, bellicose actions followed the rhetoric. In April 2021, the Biden administration made evidence-free allegations that Russia committed “cyberespionage” and attempted to interfere in the US election, and imposed draconian economic sanctions as penalty. That same month, Blinken accused Russia of amassing troops near the Ukraine border (which means inside Russia), a move which would have been justified, if accurate, given Russia’s fears that the civil war in Ukraine would spill over onto Russia territory and threaten its own national security.

Conflict in the Ukraine: Do Americans Realize What Is at Stake?

Just another front to justify the spending of  billions on the M-IC…..and that is the real reason to preserve the cash that is thrown at the Pentagon…..and NO ONE cares.

WHY?

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More Sunday Sciencey Stuff

As I try to lighten the mood after a week of mind numbing news….I find science stuff to inform and enlighten.

I begin with something for our conspiracy nerds…..are we on the brink of a E.L.E.?

There’s no question things are a bit dire right now when it comes to climate change — but there is some good news: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist says we’re on the brink of mass extinction.

Wait, no. That’s horrible news.

Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT, has spoken about his predictions of a new mass extinction event in the past. He reiterated his Cassandran concerns in a recent interview with The Times of Israel, saying that human disruptions to the carbon cycle will ultimately result in calamity. 

“Every time there has been a major event in the history of life, there has also been a major perturbation of the environment,” Rothamn told the newspaper. “These things tend to come together.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-scientist-mass-extinction

Quantum computing is the next ‘big’ thing (full disclosure–my daughter invests in companies pursuing the quantum computing thing)…..

Quantum computers are set to revolutionize the way informatic works by being way faster than our current devices. We do not yet have a quantum computer but many prototypes are getting closer and can do pretty cool stuff. Including creating new phases of matter, such as a time crystal, as reported in new research published in Nature.

First of all, let’s discuss how a quantum computer works. Instead of your regular bits made of zeros or ones, you have quantum bits or qubits which harness the power of quantum mechanics. They can be in superposition, they are entangled, all quantum properties that allow for incredibly fast calculations. Linking more qubits means exponentially faster computations.

https://www.iflscience.com/physics/time-crystal-created-in-prototype-quantum-computer/

New evidence for space exploration…..

Interstellar exploration might not be lightyears away, at least not in the figurative sense. That’s because international research project Breakthrough Starshot just provided an update on its plans to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system.

Before getting there, it will have to develop and test a new type of spacecraft propulsion system that utilizes a lightsail and a laser beam array to reach the immense speeds required for interstellar travel within our lifetimes, a press statement from the Australian National University (ANU) explains.

https://interestingengineering.com/laser-powered-lightsail-could-reach-alpha-centauri-in-20-years

This one is for all those old stoners for the 60s…..

a new study was published in Nature: Scientific Reports revealed that adults who microdose psychedelics may experience decreased levels of anxiety and depression.

The study was conducted internationally by UBC Okanagan researchers and was the largest study of psychedelic micro-dosing published to date.

Microdosing has increased in popularity over the past decade and involves taking minimal doses of psychedelics– so small that they will not affect any cognitive function.

Joseph Rootman, a UBCO doctoral student and the lead author, discussed how those who micro-dosed displayed lower levels of anxiety, depression, and stress across the board than non-microdosers.

“In total, we followed more than eight thousand and five hundred people from seventy-five countries using an anonymous self-reporting system.

A New Study Found That Microdosing Psychedelics May Decrease Your Levels Of Depression And Anxiety

 

Live And Die By A1c

I am one of those unfortunate ones that suffers from diabetes, a new thing for me only diagnosed just 3 years ago, so I am always looking for news, research and scientific explanations when possible and then I share with my readers that may be in the same boat as me.

A new blogging friend Vic is always posting on diabetic news…….https://vlcrain17.wordpress.com/2021/11/28/progress-in-treatment-of-diabetes/comment-page-1/ I know this may be of interest to him as well.

We diabetic are always having the doctors give us our A1c which according to them should be below 7.0…..now I have found some news about that reading….

“He really tried hard to be at” an A1c below 7%, said Lucy Carlson. “That is what actually killed him.” If that doesn’t make sense to you, there’s a good chance you don’t have diabetes. Carlson’s husband Ron did—type 2, since 2001—and his wife said he fixated on getting his A1c score down. A1c is a measure of your average blood sugar level over a 3-month period, and as Robin Respaut, Chad Terhune, and Deborah Nelson write in a lengthy piece for Reuters, that under-7% target is one the drug industry has been promoting for two decades, leaving many people “chasing a treatment goal that could kill them.” The authors dig deep into the history of that push, which they say has been led by Aventis SA of France and adopted by rivals like Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly & Co.

The promotion of that target emerged “just as they were launching new formulations of insulin and other diabetes drugs” they painted as being able to get patients to that number, which they said would reduce the risk of long-term complications from the disease. They also funneled donations to the American Diabetes Association and other groups, getting them on board. But they weren’t as vocal about the risks of the drugs that can drive high blood glucose down, which “carry the risk of going too far, tipping a patient into hypoglycemic crisis.” It’s what happened to Ron Carlson: Plunging blood glucose had caused him to faint, crash a car, and be hospitalized. Then, in July 2019, it happened again, this time as he was parking his motorcycle. He ended up squeezing the throttle and careening nearly 100 feet into a parked car; he didn’t survive. (Read the full story for much more, including the take of a scientist involved in the original A1c research: “Marketing that everyone in the world needs to have an A1c less than 7% is crazy.”)

Read the full article…..

***Please….I am not a medical professional and do not offer this as medical advice…..please check with you health professional and anything pertaining to your treatment.***

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Closing Thought–10Dec21

Remember from your school days (that is if you studied at all) about the Founders wanting a separation of church and state?

Well that desire is slowly being eroded away and the Supreme Court is assisting in the erosion….the newest assault on the ideal…..Carson vs Makin…….

At an oral argument held Wednesday morning, all six members of the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority appeared likely to blow a significant new hole in the wall separating church and state.

The case is Carson v. Makin; the question is whether the state of Maine is required to subsidize religious education; and the majority’s answer appears, at least under certain circumstances, to be yes.

Under current law, as Justice Elena Kagan noted during Wednesday’s argument, the question of whether to fund religious education is typically left up to elected officials. Maine’s legislators decided not to do so when they drafted the state’s unusual tuition voucher program that’s at issue in Carson, and is meant to ensure that children in sparsely populated areas still receive a free education.

The overwhelming majority of Maine schoolchildren attend a school designated by their local school district. But a small minority — fewer than 5,000 students, according to the state — live in rural areas where it is not cost-effective for the state to either operate its own public school or contract with a nearby school to educate local students. In these areas, students are provided a subsidy, which helps them pay tuition at the private school of their family’s choice.

https://www.vox.com/2021/12/8/22824027/supreme-court-carson-makin-first-amendment-religion-schools-subsidize-roberts-alito-kavanaugh

Just another attempt to combine church and state….never a good idea.

Religion and governing should never be combined…..when it is someone will suffer some sort of injustice.

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Insurrection Update #20

There has been a slow trickle of news around the attempts to bring the insurrectionists of 06 January to task for their attempts to undermine the government of this country.

The big question mystery has been why was there no back up for the Capitol police when the trouble started on the fateful day?

There is now some news about that situation…..

A memo by a DC National Guard officer accuses two Army generals of lying to Congress about the response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the Pentagon of trying to cover up the failures. Gen. Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt are “absolute and unmitigated liars,” Col. Earl Matthews wrote. The issue is whether the generals held up the deployment of the Guard to the Capitol while it was under attack, Politico reports. Matthews also criticized a report by the Army’s inspector general that he said is filled with mistakes and covers for the leaders. Flynn is the older brother of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

An Army spokesperson said Flynn and Piatt “have been open, honest, and thorough in their sworn testimony with Congress and DOD investigators.” A spokesman for the inspector general’s office stood by the findings in its report, per NBC. On Jan. 6, Matthews’ job was serving as the top lawyer for Maj. Gen. William Walker, who has called for the inspector general to retract the report, which he said is inaccurate and sloppy. A House special committee is investigating the events of that day, including the Pentagon’s response. Matthews’ memo has gone to the panel.

Matthews said Piatt and Flynn, on a conference call that afternoon, argued that sending uniformed military personnel to the Capitol would not look good and suggested picking up DC police officers’ traffic duties so they could go instead. The two generals then recommended putting the Guard on standby, which the DC Guard’s timeline supports. Piatt later provided a written answer to a House panel saying, “At no point on January 6 did I tell anyone that the DC National Guard should not deploy directly to the Capitol.” Matthews says that statement was false.

I hear the news trying to play down the possibility of a return to the days of incitement….that is possible put not until the Orange Man from Florida is sidelined…..why do I say this?

Donald Trump has convinced tens of millions of Americans that the White House was stolen from him, and a significant number of them are ready to use violence to take back what he lost.

Nearly 70 percent of all Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump, according to recent polls, but researchers found that 4 percent of Americans, or about 10 million adults, agreed that violent protest was worth the risk — but that number doubled when they were asked whether violence was justified to return Trump to the presidency, reported The Atlantic.

“This really is a new, politically violent mass movement,” said researcher Robert Pape, who studies political violence. “This is collective political violence.”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-insurrection-2655927564/

Breaking news….a US Congressman talks of insurrection with ‘shock troops’…..

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Thursday talked with conservative broadcaster Steve Bannon about a plan to use “4,000 shock troops” to take over the jobs of federal government employees.

Bannon has previously said that the so-called “shock troops” need to be prepared prior to Republican control of the executive branch.

“People didn’t like that Donald Trump raised his voice but sometimes you’ve got to raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for her,” Gaetz said on Bannon’s War Room program. “We’re going to operationalize the performance to go right after the people who are imposing the vaccine mandates, who are enriching themselves and who are selling out the country.”

“Understand, this is a theory of governing,” Bannon agreed. “It’s fresh and it’s new. This is Trumpism in power. That’s when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that’s going to man the government. Get them ready now. Right? We’re going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024…….or before.”

https://www.rawstory.com/matt-gaetz-steve-bannon-shock-troops/

That language should get Gaetz thrown from the floor of the House…..at least charged with incitement.

Times are getting more dangerous by the speech from the uber morons.

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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…

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“lego ergo scribo”

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…..

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“lego ergo scribo”