Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Elgin Marbles were not 'hacked' from the Parthenon but were rescued from rubble, British Museum claims amid row over repatriation
The Greeks of classical times were very different from the people who inhabit Greece today. They were a leading civilization, not the parasites of today. So it is arguable that Britain has more right to the classical sculptures than modern-day Greece has
The British Museum has insisted its contested 'Elgin Marbles' sculptures were rescued from the Greek Parthenon and not ruthlessly stolen as a row deepens with Greek authorities over their repatriation.
Ministers from Greece and the UK are set to hold talks over the future of the sculptures, which campaigners claim were violently seized from the Acropolis by henchmen working for British diplomat and art collector Lord Elgin in 1801.
Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni says Lord Elgin committed 'blatant, serial theft' by taking the marbles.
The 2,500-year-old carvings are classed among the wonders of Ancient Greece and officials from Unesco have now waded in to help settle the quarrel, The Times reports.
Despite the controversial story of their acquisition, The British Museum's stance is that the marbles were rescued from rubble outside the Parthenon and were not highly prized.
Deputy director of the British Museum Dr Jonathan Williams said: '[They were] in fact removed from the rubble around the Parthenon.
'These objects were not all hacked from the building as has been suggested.'
The museum's attempt to reject the historical account of the sculptures' acquisition has been challenged by classicists.
Professor Paul Cartledge, a renowned classicist from Cambridge, is among those calling for the Elgin Marbles' return to Greece. He said: 'Undoubtedly a lot of hacking went on.'
However, Prof Cartledge also stated that the manner in which the items were taken is morally irrelevant, adding: 'They should all go back, however, obtained.'
Letters written to Lord Elgin by his subordinates in 1801 appear to support the Greek version of events, with a note from Giovanni Batista Lusieri confessing to his master that he 'had been obliged to be a little barbarous' in removing some sculptures from the Parthenon temple.
Greek Culture Minister Ms Mendoni added: 'Greek authortiies and the international scientific community have demonstrated with unshakeable arguments the true events surrounding the removal of the Parthenon sculptures.
'Lord Elgin used illicit and inequitable means to seize and export the Parthenon sculptures, without real legal permission to do so.'
After Lord Elgin acquired them in 1801, the sculptures were bought by the British Museum in 1816.
Unesco's Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property has told Britain it needs to adopt a more cooperative approach to those demanding the sculptures are returned to Greece.
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Data Shows White Supremacists Are Not The Most Likely Mass Murderers
Democrats are lying to Americans about the most likely motivations for mass murderers and the prevalence of guns in violent crime.
In his Buffalo, New York speech last week following a mass shooting, President Biden showed he still has only two things on his mind regarding crime: guns and white supremacists.
No one can defend white supremacists. But with violent crime soaring and this latest attack in Buffalo, people want something done. Yet Biden’s agenda won’t make people safer.
“Look, we’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; in Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta. This week in Dallas, Texas, and now in Buffalo. In Buffalo, New York,” Biden said. “White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. And it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more.”
Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9 percent have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. Many of the anti-immigrant attackers, such as the Buffalo murderer, hold decidedly environmentalist views that are more in line with the Democrat agenda.
Another 9 percent are carried out by people of Middle Eastern origin, who make up only 0.4 percent of the country’s population. That makes Middle Easterners the most likely ethnic or racial group to carry out mass public shooting
Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views. But you would never know this from watching TV police dramas or listening to Biden’s constant claim that white supremacists pose the biggest threat of domestic terrorism.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed in testimony in April that white supremacy is the top terrorism-related threat to the homeland. But when pressed, Mayorkas couldn’t name a single white supremacy case that his department referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
White supremacists with guns are not the threat that our government would have us believe. It’s not just that white supremacy is rare. So too are gun crimes. The number of gun crimes has been falling dramatically, and they now make up less than 8 percent of violent crimes in America. Yet we constantly hear the opposite from politicians who support gun restrictions.
It might not be easy to accept, but based on the evidence, focusing solely on guns and white supremacy isn’t a wise use of resources.
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Flight Attendants Fired for Opposing Radical Equality Act Sue Alaska Airlines
Two flight attendants are fighting back after Alaska Airlines fired them because they dared to question the validity of the proposed federal Equality Act in a company forum.
First Liberty Institute on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Marli Brown and Lacey Smith on grounds of religious discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Alaska Airlines.
In February 2021, Alaska Airlines announced on an internal employee message board it was going to support passage of the federal Equality Act. If enacted, the Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. Employees were invited to comment.
Smith asked: “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?”
Brown researched the Equality Act and discovered an article written and published by The Heritage Foundation, “11 Myths About H.R. 5, the Equality Act of 2021.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
After much prayer and thought, Brown posted a lengthy comment on the company’s message board based on what she’d read in the article:
Does Alaska support: endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom, obliterating [women’s] rights and parental rights? This act will [force] every American to agree with controversial government-imposed ideology … or be treated as an outlaw.
The Equality Act demolishes existing civil rights and constitutional freedoms, which threatens constitutional freedoms by eliminating conscience protections from the Civil Rights Act.
The Equality Act would affect everything from girls’ and women’s showers and locker rooms to women’s shelters and women’s prisons, endangering safety and diminishing privacy.
Giving people blanket permission to enter private spaces for the opposite sex enables sexual predators to exploit the rules and gain easy access to victims. This is Equality Act …
The rest of Brown’s post was cut off due to character limitation. Her comments reflect her belief that the Equality Act would result in the violation of legal protections in the Civil Rights Act for religious people like her and for other girls and women.
Alaska Airlines didn’t need to enforce the Equality Act for Brown’s concerns to turn out to be true.
After the women posted their questions in good faith, Alaska Airlines launched an investigation, and they were eventually fired. The airline said the flight attendants had made “discriminatory” and “offensive” comments.
Alaska Airlines told the women:
Defining gender identity or sexual orientation as a moral issue, or questioning the Company’s support for the rights of all people regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, is not a philosophical question, but a discriminatory statement.
Your posting was offensive, discriminatory, and did not align with Alaska Airline’s values.
“Alaska Airlines ‘canceled’ Lacey and Marli because of their religious beliefs, flagrantly disregarding federal civil rights laws that protect people of faith from discrimination,” Stephanie Taub, senior counsel for the Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute, said in a statement.
It is a blatant violation of state and federal civil rights laws to discriminate against someone in the workplace because of their religious beliefs and expression.
‘Woke’ corporations like Alaska Airlines think that they do not have to follow the law and can fire employees if they simply don’t like their religious beliefs.
This is another appalling example of the way big corporations that embrace the new “woke” standards on sexuality and gender identity treat employees with orthodox and traditional beliefs.
Instead of truly demonstrating inclusivity and diversity by treating all employees of all races, creeds, and beliefs equally, big corporations discriminate against—and even fire—those with orthodox views.
Those would be the very views Smith and Brown were worried would be squelched because of the Equality Act if it were to pass. It passed the House, but was filibustered in the Senate.
These two women were courageous to thoughtfully question today’s political dogma wrapped in a policy touted by the left. They are even more courageous now to stand up to their employer after being fired for their beliefs and concerns.
The firing of Brown and Smith for standing up for their Christian faith in the public sphere and questioning “progressive” policies is a flagrant violation of Title VII of federal law, which “prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, religion, color, and national origin.”
It’s disheartening to see anti-discrimination laws meant to protect people weaponized against those who are either religious or politically conservative, or who simply fail to march in lockstep with the left’s political and social agenda.
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Christian Graphic Designer Fears for Her Life as Freedom of Speech Case Heads to Supreme Court
Lorie Smith left the corporate world in 2012 to form her own website design firm, 303 Creative, which soon flourished. But in 2016 she was asked to create a design conveying a same-sex marriage message that flatly violated her deeply held Christian faith.
Smith declined to do so and when it became clear a Colorado public accommodation law would be used to force her to create messages that she and other Coloradans did not support, or face harsh penalties, she decided she had to challenge the statute.
So she turned to the federal court system to uphold her First Amendment freedoms and six years later the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in her case later this year.
Now Smith fears for her life as she awaits the slow-turning of the wheels of justice—thanks to continuous terrifying harassment, including death threats, from activists seeking to suppress her Christian beliefs.
“I have received phone calls, I’ve had mail show up at my home, I have had people wish me really vile things, things that should not be repeated, threats of bodily harm, some really vile things,” Smith said in response to a question from The Epoch Times.
Asked if she feared for her life Smith quickly responded saying, “Of course. When you hear the things that I’ve heard it is terrifying. It definitely makes your skin crawl and the hair on your back stand up.”
Smith added that “my clients have been harassed, and I love all of them dearly. They’ve received threats, as well as ultimatums, which has been difficult.”
She said the ultimatums came from “the same groups of people who have been so hateful toward me, but they took it a step further. They figured out my clients’ contact information and harassed them as well.”
Smith’s comments came on May 18 during a discussion with reporters at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) headquarters in the nation’s capital. Smith is being represented by ADF, an Arizona-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment and religious freedom cases. Her case is 303 Creative vs. Elenis.
Kristen Waggoner, ADF’s general counsel, told reporters that Smith had to appeal her case to the Supreme Court despite the multiple facts both sides of the litigation agreed on in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 10th Circuit ruled against Smith and in favor of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in a July 2021 decision in which the chief judge on the court dissented, calling the majority opinion “unprecedented” and “staggering” because the “Constitution protects Ms. Smith from the government telling her what to say …”
The chief judge also observed that, “Though I am loathe to reference [George] Orwell, the majority’s opinion endorses substantial government interference in matters of speech, religion, and conscience.
“Indeed, this case represents another chapter in the growing disconnect between the Constitution’s endorsement of pluralism of belief on the one hand and anti-discrimination laws’ restrictions of religious-based speech in the marketplace on the other.”
The judge was referring to Orwell’s famous quote that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” He added that quote to his dissent text.
The first of the essential facts in the case that both sides accepted, Waggoner explained, was “that Lorie’s religious beliefs are central to her identity and that she strives to glorify God in everything she does. The second is that Lorie works with people from all walks of life, including those who identify as LGBT.”
Waggoner said, “the 10th Circuit also agreed that Lorie, like every other artist, serves everyone. Lorie chooses whether to create websites based on their content, not based on the person that requests that content, and the 10th Circuit agreed with that fact as well. Lorie’s websites are protected speech under the First Amendment, and the 10th Circuit agreed with that.”
Even so, she said, “the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 decision that the government can actually compel Lorie’s speech, even though it admitted that her decisions hinge on what the message is in the speech and not the person who requests it.”
Waggoner described the decision as “absolutely unprecedented,” and said “our government’s duty is to protect freedom, not to take it away. So, if the government has the power to force Lorie to speak a message, then it can force any one of us to speak a message.”
The Supreme Court accepted Smith’s case in February. Waggoner said that law enforcement authorities will be contacted if Smith continues to receive harassment and threats.
Waggoner said she will be filing briefs to the High Court next week, and Colorado will then have several months to reply. Amicus briefs supporting Smith are due June 2. Oral arguments could come as early as October.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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