so it's different, i know that they can leave the wars of this community 3 short films show how performance creates a home and family, and gives hope and opportunity. ah ha select on al jazeera. ah, ah, hello almond is a broadman. don't have the top stories on al jazeera progresses and saddam have held the 10th major demonstration since the military takeover. an october security forces, fire tear, gas, internet services have been cut and large areas of the capital were locked down, while the vaal has more from cartoon. different groups of testers gathered in the sketch up to him on saturday afternoon. before marching to word, the city center,

where the presidential policy is located, the law. i'm not sure that people are good now to know street to reject this military or 30 and now slogans are clear off. but yeah, no negotiations, no partnership, no bars. one, the army is for the barracks, the militias do not rule us and we demand the hand over a full hour to civilians. we demand civilian democratic rule, but least booklet. it's fun to do. forcing the protest, this city, of course, security forces closed on the bridges leading to central cartoon. this, along with an unprecedented police presence in the street, made it difficult for the dumb of plato said, balance. on one or 2 occasions, however, the crowd managed to get of least a few 100 meters away from the warmth of the president of police. but they were soon dispersed. several went into the protest, this chanted slogans,

calling and military leaders in the rolling 70 council. to see the power to civilians at the status, thomas, to organize another day, a protest on december 13th. they insist not that they will stop their rallies only when power is completely restored to civilian government. 100 funds or just cartoon israeli soldiers have injured more than 240 palestinian protest in the town of boca north of nablus. that's according to the palestinian wed present security 45, tig live ammunition. and rob, quoted stephen bullets demonstrated rallied out of the area was close to residence . neither abraham has this update from bethlehem and the occupied westbank. there is a lot of increasing tension that's taking place in vertical and an older villages around the north of the occupied west bank where palestinians are saying that they've been left alone for themselves. and they've been organizing local committees to try

and send off the facts that have been on the rise lately. it's happening precinct ever since last week when the power in some policy and fight as a shot at and it's really settlers car in the field. one second there and injured others, and ever since then the committee has been marching and trying to get to an illegal is really in sacramento, thomas that has been from circulars in 2005, but then 2nd as a blue tear. and then open some sorts of a sensor there, and this is the location read. the 2nd half has been killed and is waiting. sometimes i've been trying to get back to whole mission. they wanted support from their political leadership to kind of have a sucker him and instead of it being in there and recognize the output 16,

they didn't get that. the 4 things been launching a series of protests that have been ending up going into palestinian villages and attacking palestinians, the least of which was also 2 days ago. at least 7 people have been killed by an explosion in the democratic republic of congo. the government says a suicide bomber target had a restaurant and benny dozens of survivors of a migrant boat thinking have arrived on the greek island of perils. at least 16 people drowned when the boat capsized in the agency on friday. and from certainly in the u. k. have reported the highest number of corona virus cases since the pen demik began. experts one that one and 10 people in london could be infected in the coming days. many hospitals, us hospitals, the severely understaffed and unable to cope with the surgeon colon 19 cases. nearly 70000 americans were hospitalized as of christmas eve. well,

those are the headlines. the bottom line is coming up next. thank you for watching . the news. ready i am steve clement and i have a question. how does the united states become the world's biggest black market for stolen artifacts from ancient civilizations? let's get to the bottom line. ah, well, if you're in the market for a coffin from the time of the pharaoh's in egypt or gold from the empire, you've come to the right place. the united states is one of the world's main places for cultural racketeering, which is the illicit trade in ancient art and artifacts. the antiquity straight is a multi $1000000000.00 industry and it takes place around the world. in all fairness, the united states isn't alone. the problem runs from germany to england, to china, the middle east and beyond. jeff last month,

france return $26.00 works of art to beneath which had been demanding the return since $1892.00. that's about 130 years ago when french colonial soldiers basically stole them and brought them home. that sort of thing is taking place now all over the world, especially in the arab world. buyers and sellers are taking advantage of lax regulations, making deals on statues from yemen or clay from the babylonians all the time. so how does the trade happen and what's being done to stop it? today we're talking to deborah layer, the founder of the antiquities coalition, which focuses on protecting cultural heritage around the world. an awesome professor of middle east history and anthropology and shiny state university and ohio, and currently a visiting professor at katara university. professor awesome is the co director of the antiquities trafficking inherited anthropology research project. it's really great to have you both here. i've always been interested in this subject as we saw, essentially the looting happen in the instability from the arab spring. and after

the wars that have happened in the middle east, you begin seeing things on facebook and ebay that you clearly knew were looted from places and we saw this going on. so i'm are kind of tell us about the smuggling route. how do artifacts get out of these places, which this is our cultural past, our history. how do they find themselves into the homes of billionaires or into museum collections from, from the area of the world where you are in right now? well, the 1st thing to say here is that looting of artifacts from, you know, tombs and places, archaeological side cetera, is as old as humanity itself. as long as people have been burying the dead with goodies, someone's been coming up behind them, digging them up, and then taking them and trying to make a profit from them. so this is not a new phenomenon. this is not specific to a certain time or place or space vac said often and

as we see in times of conflict in times of instability and you know, obviously the region since 2011 has been going through a multiple a, you know, difficulties was conflicts, et cetera. we see an increase in this kind of looting and trafficking in antiquities and cultural heritage. and places like syria, libya, and yemen, eval and eval suffered extremely of course iraq. we all know what happened to the museum baghdad. all of these places get looted and these are manifestations of basically the inability and loss of control by law enforcement agencies and the institutions are intended to protect cultural heritage sites and monuments. and usually the looting is done either by organized trafficking gangs, et cetera, which is one way this is done. but also we mustn't forget that in many cases it's just average people everyday people who just want to make ends meet and we refer to

these as subsistence looters. and between the 2 of them, you end up with a lot of stuff, flooding the market or armor. we also saw this from ice as we saw this from terror groups. we saw isis, which was out either destroying. ah, you know, big a cultural relics, you know, buildings and, and sites of worship. but taking these antiquities to also help fuel itself. tell us about back this. well, certainly m, we'd appreciate that groups like isis and isis is not exclusive in this basically see cultural heritage as a resource and they exploit this resource in number different ways effectively in the case of isis and they looted what they can sell and what they could not sell because he was too big or immovable. they then destroyed in this, in these very public sort of manner displays i referred to these as cultural heritage atrocities. and these were specifically designed to demonstrate the able

to devices to act with impunity. and the impotence of the international community unlocked communities to prevent them from doing that. so essentially, isis exploited cultural heritage as a resource in missing with a but exploit and mineral wealth or a cotton harvest or, or any other if you know, and material or something they can use to enrich themselves and to fund their activities. and, and of course, the other big game changer in all of this was the expansion of the internet and social media platforms. which kind of really acted as a game changer from around 20132014 onwards opening up the market in ways that we could not imagine before. well, thank you. deborah layer, you felt found the antiquities coalition because you were disturbed by what you saw in the practice, the racketeering. the looting of these are incredibly priceless artifacts from arc

really it's our collective pass. it's all of our collect a pass from ancient civilization and whatnot. and i'm just interested in what the ecosystem is and, and, and how, when you sort of look at it today and, and what are the parts of this ecosystem that you feel we can, you know, make an impact on? well, one of the things that we're very appreciative is that the political will, is growing in recognition that this is a serious crime and it's a global crime. an, as honor rightly pointed out, some of the, you know, looting has been going on as long as there have been very treasure. but with the advent of sophisticated technologies like the internet, with express mail, with these online auction houses. now you make this looting essentially in the market for a global and so you can tap into that and the conventions that we have the international laws that we have pre date in many times. this new technology, the, the main one from you. now sco dates from 1970. so we need to create a new updated legal structure that reflects the modern so what's the limit of that

unesco framework? what's wrong with it that it's not capturing this did these digital platforms, so it doesn't give the ability to even address in commerce. for example, it doesn't give unesco. the ability in many ways to be proactive in its nature, in times of conflict, to go in and create for example, a blue helmets for culture. the italians took the lead and tried to do that through the united nations and recognition at this crisis with support from jordan and iraq . but we still have a ways to go for the international community in particular unesco to be proactive. what we do have, which i think is very encouraging, is the g 20 under italy's leadership actually took up the issue this year. and they are looking at how we can address through the major markets which tend to be the demand countries creating the infrastructure, whether it's through our crime squads in the police, through being creative and how we would use for example,

anti money laundering laws and other capabilities raising awareness amongst dealers, collectors auction houses to offer the sellers of these items to raise awareness, to make sure that it's being seen as a serious crime. well, you know what a fasting things. i've been reading about awesome group and i'm fascinated because it sounds like you have league of facebook watchers. you've got a great report out on, on facebook, and i myself, have seen the artifacts on facebook and on a e bay. and. and so when you look at, at the digital platforms, the visuals of these things help broaden the market, but they also help you know, those that are watching kind of see what you're doing. tell us about this golden sarcophagus at the met. well, that's what to you rightly point out. i mean it's now become this global platform, right? it used to be, in the old days, you'd walk into a manhattan show room, they would only be able to have an inventory of a few items. you would see what you were getting, you would make the purchase. now you can take a look at it online. and in the case of the mat, they actually, it is

a very famous photo. if this is a mass horn to museum, a better policy big man, the big met, an a simple google search would have identified that on of the stamp that was on his full size golden sarcophagus from egypt. that it was actually a fake provenance. just a simple google search is what was needed. and it was bought from europe and had been looted from egypt after 2011 beautiful piece that has since been repatriated back to egypt. and it was a photo with kim carr dash and standing in front of it. absolutely. and then that ball zillions of people saw it. right. of course. yeah, i find that fasting. and in just another one, you know, i find this fascinating that some of the worst culprits in this are in the united states. michael steinhardt, a 1000000000 are very famous in the hedge fund industry. i had a 180 or more looted items. what's the story there and donated to that to the met,

also a piece that had to be returned and to many other major museums. and steinhart is just one example of many, and this is part of a global network that we need to start to address. starting from the supply countries, and we know in some cases with a breakdown in civil society, people are looking for how they can survive. we understand. but it's these international gangs that start to get involved in the mid level people, the distributors and some days in cases and with syria and iraq. for example, when the worst of alluding was going on in the time of the crisis, much of the antiquities were coming across the turkish border. and as police were looking to stop them, one day they would be seizing antiquities and humans. another day it was antiquities and nuclear materials. so the distribution networks tend to be the same with just a variety of products. it then gets to a middleman where it's specialized in these specialists, then start to work with experts. whether it's in the case recently of southeast

asian art, somebody out of thailand was acting as a middle man for the career ruse when they needed some money for the civil war. they would sell a few of the looted antiquities from cambodia. he worked with a professor here in the u. s. and a very well known and well respected dealer in manhattan who's just pleaded guilty to 3 felony crimes for her complicit work in sallied the southeast asian antiquity . wow, so this corruption, even in the finest salons, amr, i'm really interested in how for our audience we process. what is, what are the kinds of appropriate artifacts that are in museums? you know, i've been to the museum of art and philadelphia, or the museums of natural history, and we see mummies and sarcophagus. we see the elgin marbles in london. we see, you know, lot of elements of our collective history in these great museums in the world.

howard those different than what you're trying to stop today, or is it all part of the, you know, the same, you know, the same process of, you know, looting? well, i mean, technically and, and, and i said technically any item in a museum today. and i, whether it's the metropolitan museum, whether it's the loop in paris, whether it's the british museum, philadelphia, or any of these other museums that you mentioned. technically any, i think that doesn't originate in that country or from that country has at some point been looted. now the question of legality is another matter altogether, because obviously, you know, whilst the original owners of these artifacts would want to claim them back. and we know that there are numerous countries in the case of the young and marbles. for example, the grease has been demanding their return for many, many, many years. but the $970.00 unesco convention,

which i believe debra mentioned earlier on, is kind of the, you know, the watershed point where it was decided with the assembly convention than any item that happened to already be out of its country of origin irrespective of how it got ad m as all that happens often 19 before 970. then it take that it gets grandfather dean. so everything we work on and we work on today is focused on artifact objects. items that are looted or supposed to have originated outside or come outside after $970.00 and to make this kind of little clearer. imagine if you remember there was a case in 2019. and when chris sees where selling in the head, from when a student comes to and it was a huge, huge discussion and debate and any egyptians were claiming that this was looted and

it needed to be returned. and the, you know, and christy's were saying no, no, no, and this is, this is legal. we can sell it in the original owner, the owners who are in the tank. i'm with a guy, you know, in a town town saying none of that we can hold onto this. what was incredible for us is no one was disputing. he was looted neither the gibbons nor the owners nor chris . nobody was saying that under this was not lucy, everybody agreed it was looted and that's what for me was incredible. what the argument was about was it was it before 970 you were up to 970 so it's ok for me looted as those is looted before 1970 and he thought okay, of and i think that's part of the the problem that we have now, there are many ways to address this, i think, and there are ways that are already sort of, you know, he in play one ways to, for example, suggest that, you know, one country might put these objects that are already in, say the loop or in the matter elsewhere on a long term loan or permanent loan,

but the original ownership would be rich given back to to the country of origin. there are ways of making this right without just emptying adul museums. but there needs to be a recognition that there was a fundamental wrong done in the 1st place for all these objects. and items were taken out where it is. sounds like, you know, so interesting that the early crimes are somehow more legitimate now than these others. but deborah, you know, i, i am interested in, in the approach of how do you basically drain the swamp of, of the financial ecosystem where these products find buyers than there is a market place out there. and if you succeed, if your coalition succeeds over time, do you worry that those items then become so hot, so toxic to own and worthless in a way actually of negative value given the fact that they were deluded that they will be destroyed. i'm wondering what the tension is for because i'm reading and

you know, again in some of what armor has put out there, that some of the looting is taken from some of these war sites and held for a decade before they find their way to market. so if, if you succeed in draining that, that financial success for those that are looting, do you worry that those artifacts will be destroyed? i don't see that, that's really a big risk. and what we're trying to do, what we're trying to do is just make it more difficult and it's not like say with some of the fine pieces of ivory that we saw mass destruction down of ivory. what we're trying to do is to one make it so that if people would be willing to return them to make sure that there's a recognition that these things are looted and you should be aware when you're buying. and that's, that's part of the issue. and the chinese have a great saying scare the chicken to kill the monkeys. i mean, sorry, the other way till the ticket to scare the monkeys. and to go after and make one big example. in the case of michael stein hard,

and the fact that they've gone and banned him from life or collecting that sends a very strong signal to the collecting community in new york that they need to be aware of what they are doing. one of the other things that we have really focused on to is creating a legal basis for the ability to engage in the legal trade. so for example, with egypt, egypt has now negotiated a cultural memorandum of understanding with the united states. and the basis is the 1970 convention. but what they have agreed with us is that certain types of their antiquities now cannot be exported to the united states and less the person purchasing them has an import permit. and in this case, it shifts the burden of proof. so in the case of the met, for example, before this agreement, the met would have to prove that the, i'm sorry, it would have to prove that the item was looted now, then that has to prove that the item is legitimate coming in. interesting. now just

just for you, go back to armor, but i'm interested in this museum of the bible here in washington. d. c. basically set up an established by steven green, who also is the hobby lobby hobby lobby. had a decision against it, also for trading and artifacts which, you know, looted, artifacts and, and had to return many of these. how did the museum of the bible get on the wrong side of this racket? i think in the case of the hobby lobby issue and the museum of the bible, it was perhaps over enthusiasm and they were going out and dealing with the dealers and others who were providing them with very bad advice. they had gotten legal advice saying not to go ahead with some of these purchases from one of the top cultural property lawyers. and they still went ahead with an anyway. and they've had, they've been fined $3000000.00. they had to return a lot of the items that they had, but they also donated

a number of their collection to the museum of the bible. so the museum of the bible has now brought in experts to go through all of their collection. they found that every one of the dead sea scrolls that they had purchased actually were fake. which is one of the other issues in the market here. you never really know if you're buying something that's been looted or potentially fake. and they've had to return a number of their items, including a tablet that they've had to return to iraq. are one of the things that i talked about earlier is this antiquities trapping, trafficking inherited anthropology, research project. you, you and your colleagues are essentially watching social media and i'd like our audience to know where are these items showing up in social media? you did a project on facebook, is facebook cooperating, or they turning a blind eye to this trafficking that's going on?

what are some of the other platforms where you see essentially the, the, the market for stolen and looted antiquities. right, so, and my colleague, katie pool and myself and kitty actually used to work with them at deborah, at the antiquities coalition when we 1st met. and so we started looking at social media because we noticed from around 2013 onwards as social media and as faith was becoming extremely popular in as say, areas like the men at region, the middle east that in and it's been more specifically those conflict sounds like syria, like libya like yemen. and we noticed that these artifacts and when you were being looted, where some nissan show up, i'm on social media on facebook. and as we dug in more and more into that, and really katie gets the biggest share of the credit here for doing this. and we

noticed that there were these groups that were forming and part of the algorithm of how facebook works essentially encourages people to join groups invites you introduce. so once it notices once the other than us is that your interest in something, it then kind of opens up more and more to it. so what happened then is that if you think of it this way, the same and tools, the same, the same set of features on facebook that you and i might use to share a photo of ourselves or to hire what we did this morning or who we met with becomes the perfect toolkit for it would be trafficker or looter to basically put there, where's that and most, most critically here. easy became the great equalizer because it removed the most single important bottleneck. that is when the something, when that item comes out of the ground and then how do you bring it out? how do you show it to potential buyers and will critically buyers who pay real money. the fact that that, that bottleneck, that intermediaries that gone,

because then you can take the site and put it on on, on mine, and basically on, in these groups. and suddenly everybody can see, it was a huge, huge game changer. we track right now over 300, right? 30 groups on facebook and in excess of 2500000 people, right? not all of them, obviously active, but they're, they're in these groups. and that's credible change. and of course facebook do not, you know, help us. they don't work, they did their knowledge even that they had a problem with the very recently when we finally got them lost right in 2020 to change the prior. i'm a we're right at the and i, i appreciate that. thank you. let me just ask debra real quick in our last 30 seconds here. what else do you need to change by way of law? just 30 seconds u. s. law international law. what else would help you in your costs? well, one of the things is for countries to extend the laws for money laundering to include

the trade in antiquities to include the art and antiquities market, which is the largest unregulated or self regulated market in the world. today. a fasting will deborah layer, founder of the antiquities coalition and awesome professor of middle east history and anthropology. thank you so much for being with us for the fascinating conversation. i've been wanting to have this conversation for a year. very glad we've done it now. thank you. so much, thank you. thank you. so what's the bottom line? stealing and trafficking in other people's cultural past and treasures is a huge, multi 1000000000 dollar industry, western museums and private collections are just talk full of antiquities taken during wars and occupations and other acts of imperialism. and colonialism. individuals were the original looters, and now they are criminal syndicates and they use big social media platforms like facebook and ebay to sell these prices, items that in case our history buyers are out there, fueling this criminal racket. and we all of us. that means you that means me are

the victims. as my guest said today, we need more awareness of this. and only networks of those who care can protect our history culture and past i care and you should to and that's the bottom line. ah, i've always been fascinated by space, but the story, the space race isn't just about the men who wish their lives to travel and see unknown. but the ones who held those lives in their hands with grandfather and his colleagues worked on the space suits they design his face suits. apollo 11 was his triumph or, and the perfectly designed space suits with his legacy, hooting man on the moon. on al jazeera al jazeera world takes a road trip across spain. spanish, people love to tell you who they are and where they come from. and i am no

exception. one woman's journey seeking her heritage. i'm covering you insights into christian spots. listen, i'm origin. it's a story that seems to have been her brush that come to street in search of my roots on al jazeera. oh, wow. and ominous the brought him into harvard, the top stories on al jazeera security forces and saddam have fire tear gas had protested in the capitol card form tens of thousands rallied to call on the military to stay out of politics if the 10th major demonstrations since october mohammed bothers and cartoon the information we have and the crowds we saw indicate that there have been a huge numbers of protesters across called to him. some of them were in on door man,

some in body. these are the 2 other cities are creating a.