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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 24546109, member: 128351&quot;]I am sorry for your relatives who fell victims of this drug trafficking scourge. Going after dishonest auctioneers and dealers who falsify documents for selling illegal antiquities at the highest possible price, or going after drug cartels are the same fight. Drugs and illegal antiquities come through the same circuits, often controlled by the same people from the Middle East, South America, South Italy. They need honourably reputed accomplices in the West who will forge legal provenances, reach the solvable market and launder the money in banks.</p><p><br /></p><p>You seem to state that nothing should get in the way of free trade (except for drugs, OK). In the Renaissance, you shouldn&#039;t probably have seen any problem with buying and selling indulgences! A lot of people beg to differ. In some countries it is legal to freely sell and buy lethal firearms, human blood and body parts, while in others money cannot buy anything and this trade is illegal. In some countries education and medicine are a merchandise for those who can afford it, while in some others they are a right for everybody, paid for by taxpayers. It&#039;s a question of ideology, and would be a long discussion...</p><p><br /></p><p>About antiquities, I am not sure the US would see no problem if somebody discovered objects of high historical significance (Young George Washington&#039;s axe, Peter Stuyvesant&#039;s diary, etc.) and took them abroad for selling to some unknown collector. Many nations protect what they consider their national heritage. You would have loved living in the early 1800s: back then, the antiquities trade was completely free, digging in Rome or Pompeii was an industry flooding the ancient art international market, same thing in Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia, where bribing local Muslim authorities bought you the right of digging for heathen &quot;idols&quot; and carrying them to Europe. But in the 1840s, 1850s and 1870s the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Ottomans realized this industry was robbing their land of its history now seen as glorious, when they were the most advanced civilizations. They passed laws to regulate the antiquities market, forbid illegal digs and declare all antiquities state property unless otherwise decided.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course it is the absolute duty of other nations to cooperate and help these countries to recover their illegally smuggled heritage. Antiquities exported before laws were passed are, of course, perfectly legal. But not those that just surfaced a year ago...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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