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posted by martyb on Friday July 07 2017, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-did-THOSe-get-here? dept.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hobby-lobby-hands-over-5500-illegally-imported-artifacts-180963969/

Big-box arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby will surrender some 5,500 artifacts it purchased illegally and pay $3 million after federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in New York yesterday, reports Dan Whitcomb at Reuters.

The objects are believed to come from Iraq, where they were smuggled into other Middle Eastern countries. In 2010, they were sent to the United States falsely labeled as clay tiles.

[...] The items include 144 cylinder seals, used to roll decorative images onto clay, as well as clay bullae, which were used to create wax tokens to authenticate documents. The majority of the items are cuneiform tablets. Cuneiform is a type of writing developed about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Iraq, Smithsonian.com's Anne Trubek reports. Over time, the writing, which looks like a series of lines and triangles impressed into palm-size pieces of wet clay, was used for over a dozen ancient languages, much like the Roman alphabet for most European and Romance languages.

So, why was a craft chain buying ancient Iraqi artifacts in the first place? Whitcomb reports that company president Steve Green is the founder of the Museum of the Bible, now under construction in Washington, D.C. He began acquiring artifacts for the museum, including the forfeited items, in 2009.

Also at NYT. DoJ and Hobby Lobby statements.


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  • (Score: 2) by BK on Friday July 07 2017, @07:05PM (7 children)

    by BK (4868) on Friday July 07 2017, @07:05PM (#536219)

    I have this completely overwhelming feeling that you cannot, for the life of you, find a left-leaning example that supports you bullshitty "both sides are bad" ideology.

    You've set the bar so low that I have to try... and in truth, you gave me one:

    "I refuse to bake these people a cake, because they'll take it to a gay wedding"

    I'll fight for [...] Jews/Muslims who don't want to be compelled to eat pork in public [school] mess halls

    Righty wants to not bake a cake for someone because his sky people don't like something that might be done with it or by the user.
    Lefty wants to compel the school cook to make a different meal because someone's sky people don't like something about the first one.

    And another paired example:
    Righty wants to take a person's freedom and property and then use the threat of force to compel future compliance because that person didn't obtain the right paperwork and permission before crossing a border.
    Lefty wants to take a person's freedom and property and then use the threat of force to compel future compliance because that person didn't obtain the right paperwork and permission before bringing their property (firearm) across a border (NYC & others).

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday July 07 2017, @07:27PM (6 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 07 2017, @07:27PM (#536233) Journal

    Libertarians. Are. The. Worst. About. This.

    You don't understand the point of contention at all: right of conscience being used as a cudgel to control others, instead of what it's intended to protect.

    Your whine here, literally has nothing to do with what you claimed earlier "both sides" do. And what really galls me more than that is how you're not going to understand that at all. You're going to continue to pout about how the whole world doesn't bend to your broken ideology, not getting that a specific concept was being discussed.

    And the worst part is, I'm pretty sure I'd have to completely overturn your whole ideology for you(which we both know won't happen) before you'd consider reflecting on the small, but very important way you were being a disingenuous shit in the earlier post. You will never cop to the mistake/lie/whatever. I don't know how you're going to refuse to understand that, but you're going to refuse to understand it.

    • (Score: 2) by BK on Friday July 07 2017, @08:06PM (2 children)

      by BK (4868) on Friday July 07 2017, @08:06PM (#536251)

      Libertarians. Are. The. Worst. About. This.

      Thankfully, I'm not one. Are you?

      You don't understand the point of contention at all: right of conscience being used as a cudgel to control others

      But I do. Righty and Lefty both want to use their own choices or belief about what is right (conscience) to control / force the behavior of others. Laws are for the other people.

      I'm pretty sure I'd have to completely overturn your whole ideology for you(which we both know won't happen)

      First, you'd need to better understand it; absent that understanding, your prediction seems to be the most likely outcome. Either way, I'm happy to talk about it if you want to try.

      --
      ...but you HAVE heard of me.
      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday July 07 2017, @08:22PM (1 child)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 07 2017, @08:22PM (#536255) Journal

        Thinking there is moral necessity that should be codified in: i.e. you can't murder someone, isn't the same thing as saying that you personally have a right of conscience to limit what others may do, since you're tacitly connected to them.

        This is neither complicated nor unreasonable.

        And fine, maybe this shitty ideology you're outlining is "ancap" or "objectivist" or some other bullshit that is intellectually indistinguishable to me from libertarianism. I will refrain from calling your insane beliefs that specific name.

        • (Score: 2) by BK on Saturday July 08 2017, @09:15PM

          by BK (4868) on Saturday July 08 2017, @09:15PM (#536640)

          Thinking there is moral necessity that should be codified in [law]: i.e. you can't murder someone

          Lots of other things other than moral necessity get codified in law. If you think otherwise, you can begin by explaining the moral necessity of this example [nyt.com]. A few of these [huffingtonpost.com] also seem fall short of moral necessity.

          You seem frustrated that I am missing your point, but the truth is, you obscured it a bit. Your first post described fairly well known cases [economist.com] pertaining to the law. Your second post in this thread referred to more obscure [cnsnews.com] issues. I thought you were talking mostly about laws or desired laws. This last post seems to indicate you want to talk about something else.

          isn't the same thing as saying that you personally have a right of conscience to limit what others may do, since you're tacitly connected to them

          You mean like this example [washingtontimes.com]? What were we talking about again?

          --
          ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday July 07 2017, @11:05PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Friday July 07 2017, @11:05PM (#536303)

      Here's a better example (not to detract from your assessment of "conservatives" but to add "liberals" to the pile). Some "liberals" want to prevent some people from expressing their views because some other people might choose to take offense to them.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 08 2017, @12:51AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 08 2017, @12:51AM (#536334) Journal

      You don't understand the point of contention at all: right of conscience being used as a cudgel to control others, instead of what it's intended to protect.

      Sounds like you have that problem instead. The Right isn't instituting smoking bans, mandatory nutrition listings in restaurants, 55 MPH speed limits, Politically Correct (PC) culture, regulating away incandescent light bulbs and toilets that flush, or trying to start race wars with the pretext of ending racism. There's a lot going on here which you seem to be missing.

      And the worst part is, I'm pretty sure I'd have to completely overturn your whole ideology for you(which we both know won't happen) before you'd consider reflecting on the small, but very important way you were being a disingenuous shit in the earlier post. You will never cop to the mistake/lie/whatever. I don't know how you're going to refuse to understand that, but you're going to refuse to understand it.

      Well buttercup, it would need to be a mistake/lie first. Noting obvious counterexamples to your prior arguments don't count.

    • (Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Saturday July 08 2017, @02:08AM

      by TheGratefulNet (659) on Saturday July 08 2017, @02:08AM (#536364)

      the 'conservative' mind is too entangled with religion; and while they brainwash them at such a young age (making it very hard to untangle their illogic), they will not willingly let go of their sky daddy myth.

      various countries have tried, over time, to remove/reduce the influence of religion. it never works. the human mind, for MOST of the population, is too easy to manipulate. we are controlled by fear, and fear is how religion gets its bite on you. it lies about 'comfort' in an afterlife, when there is 0.0% evidence of that being a reality. and yet, people fall for that scam and show no signs of smartening up. some of us have done this, but its a tiny percentage, too small to be any kind of major influence in policy.

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."