March 9, 2001

Afghan Taliban Blow Head Off Ancient Buddha

By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s ruling Taliban have blown the head off one of the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service reported on Friday. The purist Islamic group used a ``large explosive'' on Thursday to destroy the ``top quarter'' of the taller of the statues, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said. ``Informed sources told AIP that the Taliban again started the demolition of the statues on Thursday and by using a large explosive destroyed the upper part of the 53-meter statue. ``The sources said that efforts were being made today (Friday) to destroy the remaining part of the tallest statue.'' The Taliban had vowed to destroy the statues, carved almost 2,000 years ago, sparking international condemnation, but witnesses said the campaign had been put on hold for Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, which ended on Thursday. AIP said the lower portion of the statue had been destroyed ''previously'' and only the middle section remained. It did not elaborate. The two Buddhas in the central province of Bamiyan tower 53 meters (175 feet) and 38 meters (120 feet) and were hewn out of sandstone cliffs almost 2,000 years ago. A picture of the taller statue taken in 1997 shows the face already erased, chipped away over the centuries by Islamic rulers. Islam arrived in the country in the ninth century, ending centuries of Buddhist rule. Opposition officials said the Taliban resumed destruction of the Buddhas on Thursday. ``They are using tanks, artillery, shells and also explosive devices for knocking them down completely,'' Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for the opposition led by commander Ahmad Shah Masood, told Reuters. ``The Taliban have allowed residents to watch the event as well.'' AIP said there was no immediate comment from the Taliban, who are under intense international pressure to spare Afghanistan's best-known archaeological treasures. Despite the international outcry, Taliban leaders have insisted that the policy of demolishing all statues -- considered un-Islamic -- will not be reversed. A Japanese delegation of four members of parliament is on its way to the southern city of Kandahar for a last-minute appeal to save the statues. Japan, one of the largest aid donors to war-ravaged Afghanistan, has hinted that that aid could be threatened by the statue destruction campaign. Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil has rejected proposals to save the statues, which have included offers from foreign museums to buy them and a proposal to build a giant wall to hide them from Islamic eyes. The order to smash the statues was issued a month after the United Nations (news - web sites) imposed new sanctions against the Taliban, aimed mainly to force them to hand over Saudi militant Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), who is accused of blowing up two U.S. embassies.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/

Exlibris: From: "Montgomery, Leigh" Montgomeryl@csps.com
Subject:

Stolen maps

Folks: thought I would alert this list about this theft. Leigh Montgomery
FINLAND: Rare maps stolen from Finnish collection.03/02/2001Reuters English News Service(C) Reuters Limited 2001.HELSINKI, March 2 (Reuters) - Six rare, centuries-old maps have been stolen from a world-renowned Finnish collection and police said on Friday they were hunting a well-spoken British "gentleman" suspected of smuggling them abroad.
The oldest of the stolen items was a world map dating from 1482 worth tens of thousands of dollars. The newest were three maps from an atlas published in 1662, officials said.The maps from the University of Helsinki's Nordenskiold collection - named after the Finnish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiold, who navigated the North-East Passage in 1878-1879 - were apparently stolen on February 22 and 23. Finnish police believe the 44-year-old British suspect, whose name was not released, had apparently flown to London after the theft and have alerted Interpol. A Helsinki court issued an order for his arrest, but there was no immediate word on whether his extradition from Britain was being sought. Police say the theft happened under the noses of librarians, but went unnoticed until a few days later. "For a few days this gentleman spent several hours at a time in the library and he reassured the personnel with his smooth and polite behaviour," Police Inspector Pekka Korhonen told Reuters. He had come to the library dressed in suit and tie and asked to see the maps, which were in three atlases brought to a special reading room for valuable documents, library officials said. "He must have been very skilful, and the police suspect that he may have had special pockets sewn into his clothes because all he had with him was a small notebook, a pen and a ruler," said Dorrit Gustafsson, head of administration at the library. The Nordenskiold Collection contains some 24,000 maps in thousands of atlases, travelogues, ethnographical works and other geographical volumes, and is prized among experts.Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Jewish art chief hounded out

By Matthew Day in Warsaw
THE Jewish director of one of Warsaw's leading art galleries has resigned following a long and sometimes anti-Semitic campaign by ultra-nationalist politicians. Anda Rottenberg, who worked for the Zacheta Gallery, said that she was tired of the political battles that surrounded her work. Earlier this year Rottenberg caused controversy when the Zacheta Gallery displayed a figure of the Pope being crushed by a meteorite. Poland is still a staunchly Catholic country and the Polish-born Pontiff is highly revered in his homeland. The exhibit, described by one Right-wing politician as "a blasphemy and an insult to our Polish and Christian culture", provoked a furious response from the political Right. Nine Right-wing politicians sent a letter to the Ministry of Culture calling for Rottenberg's dismissal. In the letter she was described as a "civil servant of Jewish descent" who should be working in Israel rather that Poland. Rottenberg was also heavily criticised last year for an exhibition of photographs of famous actors in Nazi uniforms. Her critics accused her of being insensitive to Poland's suffering and war dead. The exhibition was closed after one of Poland's most famous actors smuggled a sabre into the gallery and managed to slash two of the photos, including his own, before being overpowered.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Art dealer burglarized; Murano glass works taken

Two multi-colored glass sculptures of a woman with a child and of a menacing cobra-like snake were reported stolen from a La Jolla art shop early yesterday. The burglary was reported at a shop on Prospect Street, near Ocean Lane, when an alarm was triggered at 2:49 a.m., said Bill Robinson, a San Diego police spokesman. The abstract works are by sculptor Dino Rosin, made from Murano glass, a multicolored glass that has blue, tan, purple and yellow hues. The "maternity sculpture" and "snake sculpture" were valued at several thousand dollars, Robinson said. Anyone with information about the sculptures was asked to call the Police Department's northern division at (858) 552-1700 during weekday business hours or, after hours, call (619) 531-2000.
http://www2.uniontrib.com/

Three charged with driving up prices on fake paintings on eBay

By Brian Bergstein
SAN JOSE -- Three men were charged Thursday with joining together to drive up prices in Internet art auctions on eBay, including one in which a Dutch user bid $135,000 for a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting. The men allegedly created more than 40 different user names on eBay with false registration information, then used those aliases to inflate bids on paintings they were auctioning. The scheme garnered bids totaling $450,000 in hundreds of auctions from November 1998 to June 2000, according to federal prosecutors in Sacramento. Self-bidding, known as shill bidding, is forbidden by San Jose-based eBay Inc. and is generally illegal in traditional auctions. EBay's deputy general counsel, Rob Chesnut, said he believed this was the first criminal case to result from alleged shill bidding online. Kenneth A. Walton, 33, a lawyer in Sacramento; Kenneth Fetterman, 33, of Placerville, and Scott Beach, 31, of Lakewood, Colo., were charged with a total of 16 counts of wire and mail fraud, which carry up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and possible restitution to victims. Fetterman also is charged with money laundering, which carries up to 20 years and a $500,000 fine. Walton and Beach did not immediately return messages seeking comment. No listing for Fetterman could be found. According to the federal indictment, Walton put the initials "RD 52" in the bottom right corner of an unsigned orange and green abstract painting that he and Fetterman had picked up at an antique store. Prosecutors said Walton then listed the painting on eBay -- with photos showing the signature -- and wrongly said he had bought it in Berkeley, where Diebenkorn worked in the early 1950s. The three men allegedly made more than 50 phony bids on the painting, driving its price from 30 cents to $135,505, before a Dutch man stepped in and bought it for $135,805. Diebenkorn's real paintings have sold for millions. Investigators for eBay later dissolved the sale and barred Walton from the site after discovering he had placed a $4,500 bid on the painting himself. Walton has said that bid was made for a friend. The indictment said the three men also drove up bids together on another work purportedly by Diebenkorn and artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Clyfford Still and Maurice Utrillo. Fetterman and Walton allegedly came up with fake user names with "Giacometti" and "Still" in them, to make it seem as if the painters' family members were bidding. In one case, prosecutors said, the men created a phony e-mail account for a supposed expert on Still and congratulated the buyer for recognizing an "excellent example" of the American abstract expressionist's work. EBay rules prohibit overt shill bidding and even legitimate bids from relatives and roommates of sellers. Chesnut said eBay constantly is monitoring for violations of that policy. Still, he suggested that buyers check the bid histories of their fellow auction participants to see if they notice suspicious patterns. "Anything that might in any way undermine trust in the commmunity is unacceptable," Chesnut said.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/

Auction sites generate most complaints

Most consumer complaints with regard to the Internet relate to fraud at auction sites such as Ebay. In its first six months of operation, the US Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) received over 20,000 complaints and 64.1 percent of those related to auction fraud. A further 22 percent were about undelivered merchandise and or undelivered payment for merchandise. Complaints relating to credit and debit card fraud only made up 5 percent of the total. California has the highest concentration of both Internet criminals and victims, followed by Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York. Several of the complaints to the IFCC involved monetary losses of over USD100,000. One complaint, which resulted in a prosecution, involved over USD366,000.
http://www.nua.ie/