Your Excellencies, leaders of Africa, we will not accept anything less than, a) The formation of a task force to investigate Ethiopia's complaint about the restituiton of its stolen heritage. b) In the event that Ethiopia's claim is found to be justified, the suspension of diplomatic relations with Italy by all members of the African Union. c) In the event that the Italian government refuses to address the issue properly, the breaking of trade relations with it. d) In the event that the Italian government refuses to abide by the findings of the task force, the declaration by The African Union that Italy is an enemy nation of Africa.
Having said that, and for we have heard that the new organization is a "people's organization" and not a "dictators' club", and in the event that they fail to address our grievances and strongly represent us, we will hold the following African leaders personally responsible for not having carried out their responsibilities.
1) Mr. Mbeki, current President of South Africa & of the AU
2) Mr. Zenawi, current Prime Minister of Ethiopia
3) General Obasanjo, current President of Nigeria
4) Colonel Ghadafi, current President of Libya
It is our firm belief that this generation of Africans and their leaders will finally bring to an end this sordid chapter of human history, namely fascism and Ethiopia shall reclaim her heritage.
http://www.addistribune.com/
Italy at last returning obelisk to Ethiopia
Monument was looted by Mussolini in '37
Washington Post Saturday, July 20, 2002Rome -- Italy's government decided Friday to send home an ancient obelisk looted from Ethiopia by Mussolini's troops in 1937 and end a long controversy over its presence in central Rome. The Obelisk of Axum, believed to be a funeral monument, stands outside the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, a building originally intended to be the ministry in charge of Italy's African colonies. Beginning shortly after World War II, various Italian governments have promised to send the obelisk back, but pleaded practical problems in moving the 80-foot granite monument. In late May, lightning struck the obelisk and broke off parts of the top, effectively demolishing an old argument that it was safer to keep it in Rome than transport it to Ethiopia. Shortly afterward, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called for the end of the obelisk's "forced exile." A month ago, the Parliament in Addis Ababa said the dispute could seriously damage relations with Rome. The Axum decision was not unanimously welcomed here, even though Italy itself has lost numerous art and archaeological gems to foreign looters and collectors. Napoleon, for instance, carted off numerous paintings after he conquered Venice in 1797.
The odyssey of the Axum obelisk began in 1937, when the forces of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, then ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie. The monument, said to date from between the first and fourth centuries A.D., was dismantled, driven to the coast of Eritrea, put on a ship for Naples and from there sent by train to Rome.
http://sfgate.com/
Skull's origin at issue in trial over its sale
By Matt O'ConnorTribune staff reporter
A Loyola University anthropologist testified Tuesday that she believes that a skull seized by authorities from a suburban antiques dealer was that of a Native American. In an unusual case, the dealer, Ugo G. DeLuca, is on trial in federal court accused of a misdemeanor violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. Prosecutors Lawrence Oliver II and Edmond Chang must prove that the skull was that of a Native American and that DeLuca knew it. DeLuca had advertised the skull as Native American and was trying to sell it for $265 at an antiques mall in Elk Grove Village when it was seized in 1998. The Loyola anthropologist, Anne Grauer, who is also a research analyst for the Field Museum of Natural History, testified that she has examined about 3,000 skeletal remains. She said it is the first time she has testified as an expert witness in a criminal case. Grauer said her examination of the skull's teeth showed several genetic traits predominant among Native Americans, including shovel- shaped incisors. Certain facial features--rounded eye sockets and the shape of the nose--also led her to conclude that the skull was a Native American's, Grauer testified.
During cross-examination by DeLuca's lawyer, David Jankura, Grauer conceded that other anthropologists might come to different conclusions. Grauer acknowledged that in her initial written report she had concluded the skull was "most probably" that of a Native American. After a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent asked her to clarify what that meant, Grauer wrote a separate report saying that that within a "reasonable degree of scientific certainty" the skull was a Native American's. Thomas Stafford, a geoscientist from Colorado, testified that radiocarbon testing showed with "99.7 percent statistical confidence" that the skull dated to between about 1030 and 1290 A.D. DeLuca told authorities that the dealer who sold him the skull said it dated to before Columbus' arrival in America in 1492 and that it had been unearthed Downstate near Ottawa in the 1920s. Thomas Emerson, a University of Illinois anthropologist, said university records show there were excavations at Indian burial grounds in the Ottawa area in 1929 and the 1960s and that looting of remains occurred, particularly in the 1960s.
Chicago Tribune
Money laundering behind art deal
BY LARRY LEBOWITZllebowitz@herald.com
Federal authorities acknowledged for the first time Friday that two rare paintings seized in an international drug conspiracy were supposed to pay off a separate money laundering debt -- not to cover the cost of 4,400 pounds of cocaine as authorities claimed earlier this week. The paintings -- El Atraco A La Diligencia by Francisco de Goya and Buste de Jeune Femme by Tsuguharu Foujita -- were exported from Switzerland by an accused money launderer in Switzerland who owed an unspecified sum to a Colombian cocaine supplier, prosecutors said. Details of the art-for-money-laundering-debt were buried amid an international travelogue of exotic locales and characters during a bond hearing Friday in Miami for Coral Gables real estate agent Doris Mangeri Salazar. A federal magistrate ordered Salazar held without bond after authorities described the agent and her Colombian pals riding horses and camels to an oasis in the Saudi desert where they negotiated the two-ton cocaine deal with her former boyfriend, a Saudi prince. The indictment charges Salazar, Saudi prince Nayef Bin Sultan Bin Fawwaz Al-Shaalan, Spanish-born Swiss banker Jose Maria Clemente and Colombian-born Miami resident Ivan Lopez Vanegas with trafficking 4,400 pounds of cocaine from Venezuela to Paris in May 1999. All but Salazar remain at large.
START OF CONSPIRACY
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Arango said the conspiracy started in the summer of 1998 when major Colombian cocaine suppliers sought new avenues to move drugs to the United States and Europe.According to the government:
Vanegas had friendships with two of the cocaine barons. His friend Salazar was still in contact with her ex-boyfriend Al-Shaalan. She introduced the prince to Vanegas' cocaine friends in September 1998 in Marbella, Spain. Al-Shaalan, who founded his own bank earlier that year in Geneva, told the Colombians he could use his diplomatic immunity to transport large quantities of cocaine on his private jet. All four defendants and one of the Colombians traveled to Al- Shaalan's home in Riyadh in December 1998. At one point they were the prince's guests in the camel-ride and camping trip in the desert. ''The actual plan to transport [the cocaine] from Caracas to Paris were sketched out at this meeting,'' Arango said. Several photos from that trip were seized by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents at Salazar's home on Wednesday. DEA Agent Anthony Angeli said Salazar kept a handful of photos of herself and the prince in a safe in her bedroom closet with five passports -- four Colombian and one American. Defense attorneys Michael Catalano and Kenneth Swartz said Salazar dated the prince in the late 1970s when he was a student at the University of Miami. Her lawyers said she is innocent. The four defendants and one of the Colombians met for the final time at a Marriott hotel in Aruba in February 1999. ''That's where they finalized the deal,'' Arango said, with the Colombians ''fronting'' all of the cocaine to Al-Shaalan, who was looking to pocket $20 million after it was sold.
DRUGS ON PRINCE'S JET
In May, the Colombians trucked 4,400 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $40 million to a warehouse in Caracas where the prince was attending a meeting of oil-producing countries at the time, Arango said. The drugs were broken into suitcase-sized portions, loaded on the prince's jet and flown from Caracas to Riyadh to Paris. Although the Saudi government has repeatedly said Al- Shaalan is not a member of the royal family, prosecutors insisted he is married to a daughter of Crown Prince Abdullah, second in line to the throne. Investigators began building a case against Al-Shaalan in 2000 with the help of four primary witnesses, who were among 43 people indicted in 1999 in Operation Millennium, which targeted Colombia's largest drug organizations. The Colombian witnesses have already pleaded guilty and are cooperating with DEA in hopes of receiving lighter sentences. Two of those witnesses, Arango said, are art aficionados who have laundered some drug profits with the purchase of rare paintings. Arango described Clemente as a longtime money launderer for the Colombians. One of the Colombians enticed Clemente to arrange for export of the two rare paintings from Switzerland to the United States last year, supposedly to repay the unspecified money laundering debt. DEA seized the paintings in March at a New York art warehouse. A Barcelona art dealer and collector not implicated in the Miami case has sued, claiming she is the rightful owner of the paintings and is challenging DEA's right to seize them. Salazar's family and friends were crestfallen with the magistrate's refusal to release her on bond. They described Salazar as a stable, hard-working mother of four who co-owns a real estate business with her sister.http://www.miami.com/
Grave robbers loot family burials on historic mound
Of the 72 known Indian mounds in Charlotte County, the one at the old Driggers ranch along Burnt Store Road is unusual. It is a burial site for Americans of various skin colors and time periods.Descendants of the Driggers and Lowe pioneer-settlers know the archeological treasure as Biven's Mound. It is listed on the official Florida Master Site File as CHEC4.OH, nominated by Bob Edic, local representative for the Florida Museum of Natural History. He inspected the site in 1997 and interviewed several nearby residents for an oral history. Biven is said to have been a "free Negro." He had lived on the mound along a small creek known as Biven Branch. It flows into nearby Charlotte Harbor. He died and was buried there before 1880. John M. Driggers arrived then to take possession of 40 acres of range that included the mound. Research by your writer failed to yield documentary evidence of Biven. Apparently, he had been a "squatter" on the land, but liked by the few settlers. To have described him as a free Negro, many years after the Civil War, suggests he may never have been a slave. Blacks from Cuba or other West Indian countries often migrated to the United States and worked for pay. If Biven was 60 or older at the time of his death, he could have been one of about 90 runaway slaves living at their own fort on Pine Island during the Seminole War. Burnt Store Road was an Indian trail when Hernando de Soto is believed by some to have come ashore there in 1539. It was also the path to an Indian trading post -- burned by Billy Bowlegs in 1848 -- south of today's Burnt Store Marina.
Just before the Civil War, the trail was the road to a cattle pen on a stream that became known as Yucca Pen Creek. Supposedly, yucca cactus thrived there. A dock nearby was used to load cattle for Cuba on Capt. James McKay's sidewheel steamer, Scottish Chief. Yucca is a corruption of "euchre" by Yankee retirees unfamiliar with Southern drawl. Euchre is a card came that was popular with cowmen. After their animals were corralled and waiting for Capt. McKay, cattle drivers often gambled at cards. According to legend, the pen got its name from a high-stakes euchre game in which a cattle baron lost his entire herd. When the Civil War began, McKay, Jacob Summerlin and Joel Knight sold cattle to the Confederacy. They moved their dock to Live Oak Point (now Charlotte Harbor town) where they could load out of sight of Union gun ships at Boca Grande Pass. Biven, a free black, might have been a Euchre Pen keeper who moved to a remote Indian mound after the facility was abandoned. The heavily forested mound is well-defined, about 20 feet high and 100 feet in diameter at the base. Certainly it was constructed by ancient Calusa Indians. The Seminoles came to Florida from Georgia in the early 1700s and did not build mounds. The size of the mound indicates it was used for ceremonial purposes. It probably included communal burying of bleached bones and an annual human sacrifice to a sun god. The approach to the sacred mound would have been by dugout canoe. Living mounds would have been closer to the harbor, convenient for fishing and only high enough to keep the feet dry.
The Driggers arrive
Though Biven's background is speculative, we have documentation for the Driggers. Six members of the Driggers and Lowe families also are buried in the mound. Descendants Mrs. Louise Driggers Lowe and William Driggers are upset about recent mound looters. They asked your writer and U.S. Cleveland -- historians and members of the Charlotte County Historic Preservation Board -- to visit the site and alert authorities.John M. Driggers was the son of John L. and Elizabeth of Wauchula. They came from Georgia shortly before the Civil War. John L. served with the Florida Confederate troops, as did all other able-bodied men. They took with them their guns and knives. Thus, their families had no guns or cutlery. Mrs. Elizabeth Driggers had the only large kitchen knife in their settlement. When Mrs. Driggers needed beef, she and 10-year-old John M. cornered a penned cow. Then they had to beat it to death with fence rails. When neighbors did the same thing, they borrowed Mrs. Driggers' big knife to butcher their cows. John M. Driggers married Hannah Elizabeth Whidden in 1870. When they moved to the Burnt Store range in 1880, they had five children: James P., Hetty, John M. Jr., Simeon and Jackson. The 1880 census of Manatee County -- which at that time extended from Manatee south to what is now Lee County -- discloses that John M. Driggers was 28 and Hannah was 29. They were blessed with a sixth child, Henrietta. In the next few years they also had a daughter they named Pleman, and sons Chester and William Floyd. The new homestead was close to the old Indian mound and to Biven Branch, which provided water. It was quite isolated. The census enumerator visited only three other families in the area over a two-day period. A tax record for 1885 shows that John M. Driggers owned 40 acres, enough for a home site, kitchen garden and a cash crop of sweet potatoes or black-eye peas. His cattle roamed the miles of prairie. He paid taxes on a home valued at $400, 32 cattle and two horses. Undoubtedly, John M. branded many more cows than he claimed to the tax collector. This was a common practice before pastures were fenced and cattle rounded up once a year for branding. Mrs. Lowe says Biven Branch was deep enough to swim in. William Driggers says he poled a skiff down the stream to the harbor to fish. In recent years, drainage canals were dug. This improved the land but reduced the stream to a trickle.
Biven Mound has been a significant landmark for six generations of Driggers and Lowes. The rigors of frontier life, far from doctors, took a terrible toll on mothers and children. When Henrietta Driggers grew up and married "Bull" Lee, she and her baby died in childbirth. They were buried on the mound. Then John M. died in 1898 of unknown disease. He also was buried on the mound. Archie Lowe bought the Driggers home place in 1938. His brother, Ed, married Alice Lancaster. Their baby died and is buried on the mound. Pleman Driggers married a Mr. Pellham. Their little boy, Jack, fell off a porch and broke his neck. He is buried on the mound. The Pellhams' daughter Lydia grew up and married Columbus Lowe. When their baby died, it was buried on the mound. Thus, seven known humans -- a black man and six Driggers and Lowe family members -- are interred in the mound. Undoubtedly there are some Native Americans buried there also.
Grave robbers
A few years ago, an unknown Driggers descendent erected a stone cross over the grave of John M. Driggers. It replaced a wooden marker that had nearly rotted away. The new marker gave only the name John Driggers and the date 1800. Recently, grave robbers looking for skulls and Indian artifacts broke down the stone cross and dug into John M. Driggers' grave. Louise Driggers, daughter of William Floyd and widow of Virgil Lowe, lives on the two-family Burnt Store homestead. She and her brother, William E. Driggers of Charlotte Harbor town, are determined to preserve the hallowed, centuries-old burial mound. There are many old family burying places in Charlotte County, most of them forgotten and devoid of markers. State law requires that anyone discovering human bones must report the finding to the county sheriff or city police chief. They generally call in the county medical examiner (coroner). Anyone who fails to report finding a human burial, or who deliberately digs into or destroys a human burial, is subject to a $5,000 fine and/or five years in state prison. Officially listed, prehistoric sites are protected by additional laws. The state prosecutes to the limit. Native American advocacy groups bring pressure to bear on political officials. Those wishing to preserve a human burial site should construct a sturdy fence around it. To breach a private fence could bring an additional fine for trespassing. A weather-proof warning sign attached to the fence stating: "This plot protected by Florida Statute, Chapter 872" might deter casual looters. Determined pot and skull hunters already know the law and require constant vigilance. Keep law enforcement phone numbers handy.Old cemeteries are part of our historic heritage. Once gone, our cultural background becomes nameless.
http://www.sun-herald.com/
From: Alicia Riley ariley@solinet.net
Subject: Workshop on disasters
Disaster Preparedness A SOLINET Summer Preservation Workshop Roanoke City Public Library, Roanoke, VA Monday, August 20, 2002 9am - 4pmLibraries and archives are vulnerable to a variety of disasters ranging from fires and flooding to roof leaks and mold outbreaks. Through lecture, group exercises, and demonstration, this workshop will provide the training necessary to plan, organize, and execute a disaster plan and salvage operation.
Cost is $105 SOLINET members ($95 early bird, $125 late registration), $145 non-members ($135 early bird, $165 late registration). Early bird deadline is July 30. Any institution within Virginia qualifies for the member rate.
For more information or to register, contact
Vanessa Richardson 800-999-8558 vanessa_richardson@solinet.net
Visit URL: http://www.solinet.net for full descriptions and online registration.
This workshop is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access.
The Art Newspaper.com
This week's top stories:
ART IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN ART HISTORY
LONDON. In 1987, Neil MacGregor was appointed director of the National Gallery with no previous experience in the field. Now he moves on to Britain’s most challenging museum job, the British Museum, having gained national, even international fame as an outstanding director. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9778BILLIONAIRE COLLECTORS PREFER CONTEMPORARY ART
LONDON. These are the top connoisseurs—the collectors most valued by international auction houses and leading dealers. Not only do they have taste, but also the means to indulge their passions. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9777A FORMULA FOR INDIFFERENCE
LONDON. A few weeks ago I attended a talk given by English Heritage where we were lectured on “the exciting diversity of voices, that contributed to the life of Eltham Palace”. We were instructed to reflect on the experience of those who made the rugs, not the material or the pattern, and certainly not the works of art on the wall. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9776CHIECHANOWIECKI COLLECTION: NOT TAKING A GAMBLE
PARIS. The collection of French oil sketches built up by the sculpture specialist Andrew Ciechanowiecki performed in line with expectations, raising just over €1.2 million (£768,000; $1.1m). http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9775ALMOST PLAIN SAILING
LONDON. Charles Saumarez Smith takes over at the National Gallery (NG) this month, inheriting an institution which is widely praised as the best run national museum or gallery in the UK. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9774MORE ETHICS
LONDON. The Museums Association has revised its Code of Ethics, for the seventh time since 1977. This is in recognition that values do change (and surprisingly quickly). Among the changes is more emphasis on “rejecting items with dubious provenance.” http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9773“BUYING BACK OUR HISTORY”
SAN FRANCISCO. “This is really about Americans buying back their history,” says Paul Carella, director of Arms and Armor at Butterfield’s in San Francisco. “They want a bit of the frontier or the Gold Rush, a relic of a great war.” http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9772NEW YORK DIARY: PURE SELFLESSNESS
The sound of the city, Dealer madness, Nauman goes lite, Spider art and Clemente and Marden out and about... http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9771TIRS OF RAGE
Niki de Saint Phalle, who died on 21 May 2002 at the age of 71, was one of the most original French artists to come to prominence in the 1960s. With her “Tirs” (or “Shooting paintings”) she burst upon a Parisian art scene apparently inured to sensation. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9770Anna Somers Cocks, Editor
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