[meteorite-list] Meteorite thieves

From: Michael Farmer <mike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:13:32 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <612380.79788.qm_at_web1105.biz.mail.sk1.yahoo.com>

I am dismayed at the least after reading the diatribe from the NYT and also want to respond to various things quoted there and on the met-list in general.


With regards to Gebel Kamil, so many people in the world and on this list are so fast to take any grain of something said and immediately accept it as fact, certain members on the list who constantly cry, you are the problem. I can not count the times on this list I have read such statement at "OMG everything is illegal to take from Egypt" or "Our collections are overflowing with stolen meteorites"! Do you people have the education needed to research for yourself to see if what you are spewing is based in fact? I am sick of reading this crap. Egypt has very strict laws regarding ARTIFACTS, and until I find a meteorite shaped into a scarab, a meteorite is NOT an artifact. Egypt DOES NOT have any law forbidding the removal of "ANYTHING" which is an asinine statement I have read on here recently. I have been to Egypt several times and I took my toothbrush with me, so call the police as it is "something" thus under so-called facts that is an object and
 since it was removed from Egypt, it must be stolen right?
Do yourselves a favor, and if you want an answer go find it yourselves and stop being so lazy and demanding that someone else do your homework for you.

These kinds of statements on here are the problem where lies the root of this issue. Take Oman for example, as a meteorite hunter who has found more than 700 separate meteorites in that country, and who just stood trial and was sent to PRISON there, I think I know a little about their laws firsthand now. There IS NO LAW about meteorites there. There is one scientist there who works for the government and who wants all meteorites from Oman kept there. Noble if misguided cause, so he claims meteorites are illegal to remove from Oman. BUNK! And some of you immediately jump on a statement in a newspaper and say "Well, that is the law"! NO IT ISN'T, there is no law, they are trying to stop it by using a mining law which is very very specific (We paid more than $20,000 for lawyers to work on our case). I saw the charges and I saw the laws written in their books.
We were not charged with taking meteorites, but actually with work visa violations, (under the guise that we were earning money while in Oman thus working there illegally) tourist visa violations (again saying we should have had business visas), and illegal mining operations for profit. The word meteorite does not exist in their laws and certainly does not meet any mining statutes unless we use a backhoe (Arnold, you would be screwed) in digging them out, then we would meet the part which forbids using heavy machinery to dig in the ground for valuable ore.

Regarding Gebel Kamil

The Italian scientists are obviously so incompetent that it boggles the mind but does not surprise me. They are great in the laboratory or writing papers, but in the field many of them seem to be clueless on issues of the most common-sense nature. Take the discovery of a lifetime, the Kamil crater. On their own web-page they state that they went there 2 times, once per year before this crater was announced. They took more than 10 vehicles each time and 20 or 30 people along with guides. Of course, paid for by grants, taxpayers, and universities, not likely a penny out of pocket.
In those two trips they found more than 1.5 TONS of meteorites, and yet they only took about 50 KILOS of them out of the desert, the rest they stacked in a pile! Now they cry that most of them were removed from the site by EVIL meteorite hunters.
LIE
Not a single meteorite hunter has been to that crater, too far, too dangerous, and too expensive when one has to cough up the expedition money alone and not via grants and university checkbook. (I checked on it and was looking at a $30,000 expedition). The meteorites were taken by the very EGYPTIAN guides who took them to the crater. Those people have the common-sense that WOW, these must be valuable since all these people keep coming here and stacking them up, let's take them and sell them. Give them credit, they are not so stupid as to leave them sitting in the open, stacked up like firewood and expect them to be sitting there for eternity while you come on your yearly free vacations to Egypt. I mean, on the second trip, if you were planning it, would you not take one or two extra trucks into the desert to haul out the meteorites? Doesn't take me much thinking to plan that part. I fought with one of the Italian scientists who cried that with so many
people and so much equipment they had no room for meteorites. AWWWWWWWWWWW take another truck, not hard when you have 20 already. It just did not occur to them that someone might want to sell them
and make some money. Normal for people who never earned a penny outside the academic environment where you are trained very well to beg for money and it magically appears in your "Budget".


And regarding those lumps of iron, they are not illegal, they are meteorites and Egyptian law does not mention meteorites. Anyone who can show me an Egyptian law that mentions meteorites, I will give a very nice meteorite to as a gift. And I don't want to see it lumped with ores, mining, or arrowheads. None of which they belong to.


Why don't we stop the crying like the daily emails I see from some on the list whining about how we are all criminals. If you think it is stolen, then produce the law and make your case, that is how civilized societies work, make the accusation based on law, not newspaper articles which as we can all see, are almost total BS.

Michael Farmer
Received on Tue 05 Apr 2011 02:13:32 PM PDT