A militarized federal team raided and ransacked the house of a 91 year old man. His crime? Official FBI swine thought that he might have “cultural property”:
FBI agents Wednesday removed “thousands” of cultural artifacts, including American Indian items, from the private collection of a 91-year-old Rush County man who had acquired them over the past eight decades.
An FBI command vehicle and several tents were spotted at the property in rural Waldron, about 35 miles southeast of Indianapolis.
However, the FBI was careful not to say whether they believed the man, Don Miller, had knowingly broken any laws. The FBI’s aim is to catalog the artifacts and return them to their countries of origin.
[…]
The monetary value of the items and relics has not been determined, Jones said, but the cultural value is beyond measure. In addition to American Indian objects, the collection includes items from China, Russia, Peru, Haiti, Australia and New Guinea, he said.
Bastards.
They are trying to say that it is not his property, whether he acquired it legitimately or not.
Our tax dollars are being spent on tyrannical machines like this:
The legal question ought to be a simple one. Either the stuff is either his property or it is not. But no!
The government is attempting to create a new form of property — retroactively — that is collective property. That’s what this “cultural property” bullshit amounts to. If they can declare an item that was made by an Indian to be property of all Indians (meaning some government-approved activist group or other), there is no end to it. They could just as easily declare all paintings by French artists to be French cultural property. Or all graffiti be cultural property of the graffiti artists’ community, and so on.
I hope someone takes this up to the Supreme Court, because it is so unconstitutional that it is outrageous.
Comments
5 responses to “Your property is not yours!”
As I recall, France or possibly Italy has already tried to make such a claim, though (initially) only with regard to Famous Works Of Art.
Of course, the logical conclusion will be that Indian artists won’t be able to sell their works, because no one will be allowed to own them….
What is this constitution of which you speak?
Talk about your governmental fishing expeditions! Sheesh.
Well see. Supposedly the Indians were collectivists. Any thing you get from a collective always belongs to the collective.
Now about that collective air you are breathing. Without it you couldn’t work. So all your work product….
Well we already know that Mongolian Dinosaurs skeletons are cultural property…
So tell me that this “cultural property” movement doesn’t have a politically correct component to it. Particularly if certain scientific conclusions that might be drawn will contradict aboriginal mythologies…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man