[meteorite-list] Re: Canadian Scientists Seeking...

From: dean bessey <deanbessey_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:47:09 2004
Message-ID: <LAW2-F61Oh1pMuBeZVo000090a8_at_hotmail.com>

If you read the constitution of the communist former soviet union the civil
liberties and rights that the common russian citizen had on paper made
americans look enslaved in comparison. But the reality was that these legal
rights were worthless since if you said the slightest thing that wasnt in
line with what the government told you that you were supposed to think you
were summarialy charged with something called "malicious hoolaginism" and
nobody ever saw you again.
The same is true for the canadian cultural properties act. How many
meteorites has been given an export permit in the past? I am pretty familiar
with the meteorite market (Hell, I sell more more sheer quantities of
meteorites than anybody) and you know what? I dont see that much Tagish Lake
or St Robert on the market. Just ask the dealer who bought the Hodgeville
meteorite what crap he went through (Ask him - he will tell you. I am sure
that he will tell the list to if we ask him).
You are also well aware of an incidence where there was a lawsuit threatened
over seven lousy grams of an ordinary chondrite.
The world scientific community looks at Canadians as a bunch of nuts who hog
their meteorites and are not cooperative and there canadian scientists get
shunned when they want cooperation with outside institutions.
Its a mockery of what everything that the search for science stands for.
I wont even comment on how some half brained nutcase decided that a four
billion year old rock is cultural property anyway. There is nothing
"canadian" about a meteorite. If I gave you the cut sample of a moroccan
meteorite (So that you cant do soil sample tests which has nothing to do
with the meteorite anyway) you couldent tell me if it was canadian,
moroccan, australian or from anywhere else. And keeping it locked away so
that competant researchers from around the world or keeping it out of
collectors hands dont magically make it canadian.
There is an organization in Canada called "MIAC". It is made up of 12 or 15
scientists who pretend to promote meteorites. However, nobody in the general
public, dealers, collectors or anybody with a personal meteorite collection
is permitted to join. Sounds snobbish to me. Exactly what do you guys do
anyway? Its certainly not getting the public interested in joining meteorite
organizations and starting personal collections.
The law is stupid. It destroys an incentive to look for meteorites in the
same way that lack of incentive brought down the former soviet union.
I know that the United States dumps their acid rain up here in Canada. But
thats no reason for you to dump your crap back on them.
DEAN
>






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Received on Fri 09 Nov 2001 01:10:54 AM PST