Where is Cultural Justice?

The daily Iraqi newspaper Azzaman announced today that Italy and Iraq have signed a "memorandum" that will provide assistance in the preservation of artifacts and the modernization of displays at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.  This follows on previous projects at the museum undertaken by the Italians.  The report mentions, without a hint of embarrassment, that "Italian experts have organized several seminars for their Iraqi counterparts on how to preserve and safeguard antiquities."  To anyone who follows the news about Italy's problems preserving and safeguarding its own antiquities (which are literally countless) this might raise and eyebrow and a smirk.  The report goes on to say that "The Italian side will pay for the rehabilitation and the training".  This must surely rankle some of Italy's domestic archaeologists who have suffered from severe budgetary constraints and are unable to do the most basic forms of preservation in their own country—where it seems that everything is disintegrating.  Even with assistance from other countries they cannot do that. In fact, no country on earth can keep up with the tremendous burden created by trying to save the entire history of mankind within national storehouses and controlled sites.  Really, what is the point?

These efforts are reported as Italian assistance to Iraq's national heritage, but ironically the present national government in Iraq has no cultural connection whatever with the Assyrian artifacts that are being preserved.  Any heritage from that ancient civilization is diffused in the bloodlines of millions of people who inhabit virtually every corner of the earth today.  If anything, the Assyrian heritage is global today, just as most cultural heritage is.  The UNESCO construct that led to its 1970 convention and resolution was already antiquated when it was adopted and becomes more and more irrational with each passing day and with each new birth in a world where cultures are homogenized.  Yet, emerging governments try desperately to attach themselves, like parasites, to a distant and more stable past.  This "nationalist" view is, of course, a feeble attempt to solidify their manifest destiny to rule and history is replete with failed examples.  Still, some things never change and governments are slow to learn from the mistakes of others.

So, while Italy flounders with its myriad cultural property issues at home and exports its money and experts to places like Iraq instead of solving its own problems, the United States government will do everything within its power to make sure that the nationalist interests of both these countries are protected.  The rights and interests of our own citizens are irrelevant.  We will impose controls on the transfer of anything that might be imagined as "cultural property" under the ridiculous guidelines of UNESCO 1970 and we will disenfranchise natural descendants of a vanished cultural group just because they happen to live in the USA.  This, we do in favor of the political ambitions and aspirations of an unrelated nationalist successor state.  Where is the cultural justice in that?