[meteorite-list] NYT: Barristers & Schmitt say: Vanilla & PorcBellies are Cultural Heritage. & smth hefty.

From: Richard Montgomery <rickmont_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 18:25:29 -0700
Message-ID: <09F37A18227B4AAD9A34A75443D1D5EE_at_bosoheadPC>

Martin, and all List: (since this does directly concern meteorites):

The NYT began to lose credibility long, long ago, as their circulation
numbers indicate; so their strategy has leaned toward sensationalism rather
then substance. Misrepresentation seems to have no consequence to them; as
if the management objective is to "Write something that will sell papers and
we'll watch the carnage as it unfolds, perhaps then write more stories on
the carnage."

This is nothing new, politically speaking. It hits a raw nerve when it hits
our passion like a knife in the head.

They don't care, really, they don't care. (One prominent orator commonly
refers to this type of 'journalism' with the colorful term 'drive-by' with
reference to the ugly drive-by-shootings of gangs in LA...'hit them and
run'....)

The NYT long ago lost credibility and is grapsing at straws; there is
probably a deep-enough pocket to deflect legal actions; this was a
prcatice learned by the tabloid crap-mags long ago in a business model that
sold more sensationalisitc copy than credibility. Quite frankly, I'm not
shocked that they have stooped this low (since it isn't low at all to them.)

Ours is a relatively unknown phenomenon to the masses who still read crap
like the NYT. So, perhaps, out-of-context sensationalism sailed right past
the editors (who, as we remember, don't care a wit about journalistic
propriety), yet maybe not. They probably got a slap on the ol' back from
upper management for running a story that doesn't have point-politics
written on their high foreheads.

Now, once again, the Law of Unintended Consequence (+X) rears its head.

May the NYTs readers somehow ever know the truth??? Maybe, maybe not...but
we are dealing with many many sheep.

Meteorites to most everyone (including all of us, I may be so bold to
suggest) hold a mystique within, and as well as their other physical
scientific sectrets, perhaps there is a new field of study emerging:

"How Human Masses Believe NYT Meteorite Crap."



Martin, and all,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Altmann" <altmann at meteorite-martin.de>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 5:37 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] NYT: Barristers & Schmitt say: Vanilla &
PorcBellies are Cultural Heritage. & smth hefty.


> Yuhu Phil....
>
> Of course Richard, all meteorites are illegal!!
>
> But chicken wings, daisies and potting soil too.
>
> Gosh I'm so sleepy, of course you would expect me to comment that article,
> wouldn't you?
> And such articles make me tired.
> You know what? That article is disastrous. It is labeled with NYT. Hence
> it will have the same aftermaths like the two BBC articles had, with the
> bullshit quotes from Smith. Because "BBC" & "NYT" - they are telling the
> truth. That article will be quoted thousandfold and will be the base for
> hundreds of articles other journalists will write about meteorites.
>
> I don't know anything about Anglo-Saxon press.
> Here in Germany it's usual, that a newspaper or anyone else publishing
> that someone has acted illegal or blaming someone to be a criminal,
> investigates the legal situation BEFORE the article is published and not
> afterwards. Northafrica illicit, "black market", Egypt... I doubt that the
> authors and redactors have checked the legal situation before. Because in
> the very most cases, there are no laws at all.
> Normal would be, addressed about these errors, to print a
> counterstatement.
>
> Very tired I am from the interviewed people. Always the same, for what
> motifs ever, first they lean out of the window - nobody forces them to do
> so. And afterwards they always turn to windy tergiversations, that they
> would have been misquoted. Always the same. As they hadn't gotten
> propounded the articles for rereading before the publication.
>
> In general that doesn't matter. It happens here and there, that people,
> who had built up their academic career in working on and publishing about
> such in their opinion no-go-stones or who curate collections of institutes
> and museums, which consist mainly of such private finds or who are in the
> domain of recovering new meteorites absolute dilettantes feel an urge to
> call for a witch-hunt or to act as well-poisoners.
> Such erratic minds are no global problem, they cause damage only locally
> isolated, to their universities, museums and sometimes to the tax-payers
> of their country.
> They are no problem, because the metoricists and scientists of the
> countries leading in meteoritics like USA, Canada, the European states,
> Russia and Japan simply don't want to have such a disaster like in
> Australia, where no meteorites are found anymore, where no exchange of
> material with other universities does happen, where they failed even to
> classify their 500 ordinary chondrites from expeditions from 20 years ago
> and where meteoritics suffered so badly, that in a few years they won't
> have any young meteorite scientists anymore.
>
> That is not the problem.
> Problem is, that the articles wear the brand "BBC", "New York Times"
> plus whenever a layman has to publish about meteorites and it comes to the
> legal question as only source else he will find the unhealthy article of
> Schmitt & Barrister in MAPS.
>
> That combined does an irreparable harm to meteorite science and meteorite
> collecting.
>
> Aggravating. Because always we all here on the list and the top-notch
> scientists have to suffer from the lapses of such individuals. Always we
> and not they have to repair it again over years, what these destroyed
> within a minute in their spotlight seeking. Always others then they have
> to take the can for.
>
>
>
>
> And now Richard, I will demonstrate you, that from now on, all vanilla
> taste and coffee will have to be banned from the cafeterias and the
> bureaus of the large meteorite institutes of the world.
>
> Schmitt & Barristers recovered, that coffee and vanilla are protected
> moveable cultural heritage by the means of the UNESCO convention of 1970:
>
> Look what for a method they used in their paper, authoritative for all
> meteorite Taliban:
>
>
> Here you have the full paper:
> http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2002M&PSB..37....5S
>
> And here the abstract, found more often on Web.
> http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2001/pdf/5150.pdf
>
> And here you have the full-text of the Unesco convention:
> http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
>
>
> So Richard, follow me.
> No worries, it's short.
>
> What are Schmitt & Barrister doing?
> They blank completely the formal legal regulations out, from when on and
> how only at all a meteorite can be protected by the convention, like it is
> given in the convention itself as mandatory for any item of cultural
> heritage:
> Ratification -> National Law -> national inventory -> meteorites there.
>
> The convention is no law, it is a convention to harmonize the laws among
> the countries. Meteorites always can be only protected by national laws.
> The UN can't dictate laws to their member states. That is very simple,
> each lawyer knows that. - and btw. very practically, the 1970 convention
> deals with states, private persons are not concerned at all. (Other than
> later in the Unidroit convention).
>
> So far so bad already.
>
> Now. Schmitt and Barrister ignore completely the definition of cultural
> heritage given in the article 1 of the convention, but nevertheless they
> dare to quote it for their goal.
>
> And look in which way they do it. Here the central sentence of their whole
> paper. I quote exactly. The omissions are not from me, they are from
> Schmitt & Barrister:
>
> ? ?cultural property? which is broadly defined in Article 1 to include
> ?rare ? specimens of ? minerals? which would include meteorites.?
>
>
> Well, here the original sentence from the convention without
> Schmitt&Barristers distorting mutilations:
>
> "For the purposes of this Convention, the term `cultural property' means
> property which, on religious or secular grounds, is specifically
> designated by each State as being of importance for archaeology,
> prehistory, history, literature, art or science and which belongs to the
> following categories:
>
> (a) Rare collections and specimens of fauna, flora, minerals and anatomy,
> and objects of palaeontological interest;"
>
> Complete different sense.
>
> (Not to mention, that beginning with (a) follows us a catalogue of
> categories as suggestion, what all could be reckoned as cultural heritage
> in the individual national inventories. Suggestions. A "can" and not a
> "have to"-thing.)
>
> Well and in the abstract, that what the curators and Mettaliban, too lazy
> to read the convention and unfortunately the journalist too, take at face
> value
> that all reads then in the end like that:
>
> "UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting
> and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of
> Ownership of Cultural Property:
>
> This Convention, ratified
> by over 90 states, provides for tracking and retrieving from
> reciprocating states, cultural property including meteorites."
>
> Cheap & bold.
>
>
>
> Well Richard, so much grammar we still know all.
> I make it now in no way different than Schmitt & Barrister.
>
> "specimens of fauna, flora, minerals and anatomy, and objects.."
>
> That is a grammatical sequence of equal nouns.
> I pick from there two different ones and make the quotation like they did:
>
> ? ?cultural property? which is broadly defined in Article 1 to include
> ?rare ? specimens of ? fauna,flora? which would include coffee and chicken
> wings.?
>
> Et viola - any farm product is suddenly a cultural heritage.
> (And even more as a meteorite, no human hand had touched bevore, I guess,
> it's called agriculture).
>
> If you're disturbed by the term "rare" take vanilla, it's the second most
> rare and expensive spice in existence and take pork bellies, because pig
> breeding is rare in Islamic countries.
>
> So Richard, feel free to call Dr.Harvey and Dr.DiMartino in the New York
> Times criminals, dogsbodies of illicit trafficking and theft of cultural
> property, as soon as you catch them with a coffee mug in the hand or a
> piece of ham in the cheek.
>
> Funny? It would be, cause it's so idiotic.
> But because of that private misinterpretation of the convention by Schmitt
> and Barrister,
> such collections like London, Smithsonian, Chicago do not acquire - other
> than before - desert meteorites anymore. Those collections, which were
> founded with and built up by nothing else than such privately hunted and
> traded meteorites. Well, and if they don't do Antarctics, it means a great
> harm to the quality of the scientific work there, to disengage in the
> advance of meteoritics of the last and the current decade. As Antarctic
> meteorites can't be owned, it means also great harm to public task of the
> continuity, the enlarging and diversifying of those old collections
> and if they have to acquire historic meteorites at the insanely high
> prices instead, it means also a harm to their budget (and to the
> tax-payer. Anyway the Harveys and DiMartinos of the World do seem always
> to forget, that their work is no private amusement, but that it and they
> are paid with a lot of money by the public).
>
> Their cup of tea.
>
> Well Richard, you might think, that the NYT article is disgusting.
>
> How about that?
> That is the most feculent and vile statement in that topic I ever read in
> 30 years,
> especially disgusting because it was made by a practicing catholic.
>
>
> ?The question of researching meteorites gathered illegally is essentially
> the same (though with lower stakes) than the question of doing biological
> research on stem cells.?
>
>
> Look Richard, where we are meanwhile. That climate is new, we have it only
> since the last 10 years.
> We all saw that theatre in Oman, now where so much china was smashed (a
> germanism), we have a court decision, that it was about nothing!!! See the
> brutality in Brazil. Remember the drama the Algerians made. The evil
> baiting in Canada even addressed to children. The idiocy in Poland. Or how
> Australia was eradicated from the World Map of meteoritics.
> All new. The four curators who made once that all possible in the UNESCO
> working group, they would cry bitter, bitter tears, if they could see that
> perverting of their idea their sons and daughters are doing now.
>
>
> And it makes me endlessly sad & tired too. Who of you would like to work
> in such a climate?
>
> Shame has become a foreign word.
>
>
> Meteoritics needs meteorites.
> Such evil-minded idiots meteoritics doesn't need.
>
> Good night,
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von
> Richard Kowalski
> Gesendet: Montag, 4. April 2011 21:31
> An: meteorite list
> Betreff: [meteorite-list] So all meteorites are illegal?
>
> Thanks Dirk for posting your links.
>
> A direct one to the NY Times article
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/science/05meteorite.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
>
> An interesting quote:
> ?It?s a black market,? said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western
> Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in
> Antarctica. ?It?s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.?
>
> Either Dr. Harvey is mis-informed, mis-quoted or is in the camp of
> misinformed scientists that believe meteorite ownership should be illegal
> to all.
>
>
> Good to see Anne B quoted in the article
>
> --
> Richard Kowalski
> Full Moon Photography
> IMCA #1081
> ______________________________________________
> Visit the Archives at
> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
> ______________________________________________
> Visit the Archives at
> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
Received on Mon 04 Apr 2011 09:25:29 PM PDT