{"id":182295,"date":"2015-10-27T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/27\/because-grave-robbing-is-the-christian-thing-to-do\/"},"modified":"2015-10-27T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T01:26:00","slug":"because-grave-robbing-is-the-christian-thing-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/27\/because-grave-robbing-is-the-christian-thing-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Because Grave Robbing is the Christian Thing to Do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like everyone favorite arts and crafts themed band of Talibaptist bigots have <a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/2015\/10\/reports-hobby-lobby-family-brought-illegal\">expanded their activities into dealing in stolen archaeological artifacts<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">This is how it&#8217;s done. Oligarchs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2015\/10\/26\/exclusive-feds-investigate-hobby-lobby-boss-for-illicit-artifacts.html\">pillage and loot<\/a> so they can push their own version of history on everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small  clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by  U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in  cuneiform\u2014the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day  Iraq\u2014and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound  of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for  winning a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/07\/02\/hobby-lobby-sex-lies-and-craft-supplies.html\">landmark Supreme Court case<\/a>  on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement  source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that  these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by  the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of  Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The  Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the  illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">These tablets, like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by  the Green family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant  new museum funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in  2017. Both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent  federal investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the  president of the Museum of the Bible.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">For their part, Hobby Lobby is claiming it&#8217;s just screwed-up  paperwork. Nothing more than that. Just a customs mix-up that has taken  well over 4 years to resolve. Not really.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s hoping that there will be a criminal prosecution, and a very pious Muslim cellmate, in their future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like everyone favorite arts and crafts themed band of Talibaptist bigots have expanded their activities into dealing in stolen archaeological artifacts: This is how it&#8217;s done. Oligarchs pillage and loot so they can push their own version of history on everyone. In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1212,1005,970,969,1051,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-business","category-corruption","category-evil","category-hypocrisy","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}