In addition to being hypocritical moralists and outright bigots, the owners are now certifiable international criminals. They’re building a “Museum of the Bible” in Washington DC, and Steve Green wanted to stock it with ancient artifacts, so he threw buckets of money at Middle Eastern thieves to buy up ancient relics, knowing full well that this was illegal and was supporting looting. The guy is a fucking crook who’s feeding the destruction of history, all in the name of his bible.
He has to give them back (almost pointless, given the loss of provenance) and pay a $3 million fine, a pittance for a guy worth $5 billion. A more appropriate sentence would have involved extensive jail time and closure and confiscation of his museum.
Whilst the provenance isn’t known, it is not impossible some of the artifacts were looted and/or sold via daesh or al-Qaeda, both of whom are known to deal in similar specimens as one source of financing.
I heard that the artifacts were cuneiform tablets. What woul Were some of them contemporaneous with the Bible?d they have to do with the Bible?
Try that again
I heard that the artifacts were cuneiform tablets. What would they have to do with the Bible? Were some of them contemporaneous with the Bible?
This is the biggest crock of shit. I think we actually might get some forced ethics if we held white collar executive criminals to the same standard as blue collar street criminals. If we were jailing CEOs and boards of directors for criminal activities they directed rather than fining their companies a pittance we might see executives actually trying to keep their nose a little more clean.
If I’d walked into his museum and stole one of those artifacts, under D.C. law I could spend up to 10 years in prison. That he gets effectively nothing that would even begin to deter him in the future is bullshit.
Being a good Christian, do you think he would submit to the Biblical redress for stealing? Giving up all the goods of his house and paying seven-fold?
Given the statements Green has been making since the plea deal (and it *is* a plea deal), he is clearly lying about the whole thing. If I ever went into a Hobby Lobby store, I’d be tempted to look at an item, check where it was made, and ask if it was imported legally…and did they have the documents to prove it? Won’t happen, of course, because i refuse to set foot in one of their stores.
Isn’t there _some_ sort of Homeland Security / Patriot Act criminal case to be made if an entity funds ISIL/Daesh?
Yeah, I know, bigly donors are exempt.
fusilier
James 2:24
Haven’t bought from Wahhabi Lobby for a long time, and don’t intend to start.
dodgy market-end folks should go to jail, not low-level antiquities looters.
Here here! A year or two in a nice cozy federal prison might be just what a lot of wealthy CEOs etc. need. And I don’t mean a US Club Fed.
It seems to have done wonders for Conrad Black.
God gave him DOMINION!! That means everything is his. Says so in the Bible.
blf @ 1, that’s too perfect not to be true. Yet more evidence that Republicans and DAESH work towards the same goals.
And, yes. There are laws about aiding terrorist groups, of course. And none of them apply to wealthy, white Republicans. EVERY judge has that memo.
colinday:
Who knows, maybe nothing to do with the Bible. Some early cuneiform dates back a very long time ago, as you apparently know. But wiki says it was still written into the 1st century AD. (Starting from the 31st century BC, that’s a pretty impressive lifespan!) So it definitely could be contemporaneous.
Everyone knows that cuneiform came into existence after the tower of Babel caused God to mix up human languages, shortly after a global flood reduced the human population to eight. Before that everyone spoke the King’s English. So of course it’s contemporaneous with the Bible.
I’m with Matrim. Send the fucker to jail, it’s the only way they’ll learn.
@13: You assume they CAN learn.
As Dutch historian of Antiquity Jona Lendering doesn’t cease to stress there is another problem: these relics have lost their scientific value. Many of them cannot be properly dated anymore because we’ll never know their context. Many others may even be forged. For instance you can find on internet the recipe how to forge ancient texts, like producing ink that withstands any lab test.
The fuckwit probably owns the local jails.
……………………..
mnbo
I could imagine a number of tests to show that radionucleotides were present in modern ink that didn’t exist before 1947. That’s apart from carbon dating.
YES! Researchers are calling for the *rest* of the Green’s collection to be documented!
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/spotlight-hobby-lobby-s-biblical-collection-after-smuggle-case-n780286
Evidence? Citation required!
Speculation? Yes, helped by, as suggested, a pattern.
No apologies for being pedantic here! One thing “the resistance” must not do is assert unevidenced claims. Leave that tactic to teh feckers, please.
shadow @14,
At the very least, they can learn not to get caught the next time.
Considering the money they paid for this stolen heritage found its way into the pockets of terrorist groups like ISIS, extensive jail time and confiscation of assets is entirely appropriate.
blf @ #18, yeah, I knew I was using the wrong word. I was having trouble wording.
White collar crime needs to have personal penalties, fines and jail time, in addition to fines levied against the company.
I’ve have previously suggested the “owners should be held responsible and penalised”; which essentially means the shareholders: Own shares in hobby smugglers, goto gaol (jail). There are some obvious uncomfortable points with this concept, but it seems worth discussion and refinement.
@blf
I’ve also thought that social controls need to be put on shareholding. Making the shareholders responsable for damage caused by the companies they own would be a good one. I’ve often hoped that “shareholder” should become a slur for lots of reasons. One of mone is the constant pressure to do more with less. Personal profit due to shateholding is a constant pressure on social structures, even in medicine if my experience is like that of others.
A problem is blamesharing and responsibility shifting, it’s possibly largely instinct but that is irrelevant because there must be a response. Someone needs to feel pressure to fix the problem and the owners of shares is a good choice.