A Ming vase was described as “questionable”.
GIve me a fucking break. There is nothing questionable about a Ming vase. It is what it is and has never been covered by any US law if it was obtained legally inside the country, or even outside the country (unless it was a known stolen item via robbery or fraudulent acquistions).
I’ve seen things in flea markets that were hundreds of years old which today someone could claim as “questionable”.
While I surprise laws that preserve endangered animals, esp. birds hunted for their feathers, items made long before these laws existed should be exempt and their owners not treated as “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
The FBI gets stupider and stupider every day, or is it just their addled-brained spokesmen.
The FBI people I worked with in the past are pissing in their graves the way the Bureau has been mishandled for the past few decades. It is now a PC-dominated organization of girlymen instead of the once premier investigative law enforcement agency in America, if not the world (I also like the old Scotland Yard and Israel’s Mossad).
I have a degree and experience in Archaeology and what the PC led govt agencies are doing today will destroy Archaeology as a science and probably put a number of archaeologists in jail for innocent activities.
Well, as Obama once said, “Yes we can”.
Astonishing. I had no idea. I read an article years ago about artifacts returned by major museums to Egypt? Or Turkey? Anyway, the priceless museum pieces ended up in dusty little one-room "museums" in their native countries with zero security. So much for national pride.
The first article I saw said that there were 100 FBI agents on the job, and that determining the provenance of all the artifacts might take 30 years.
Instant make-work project. Perhaps this is how Obama is addressing the unemployment problem.