human rights worker and anti-imperialist fighter Maksym Butkevych has been captured by Russia’s invading forces

Maksym Butkevych, a pacifist Christian anarchist, human rights worker and journalist, who volunteered to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces to combat Russia’s war of aggression and genocide, has been captured by Russia’s invading forces and is being defamed with grotesque propaganda.

fuelling of an illicit market and financing of political violence in Syria, feeding of propaganda around the world

In the course of expanding a study (into two studies) of the practice of “rescue”-by-purchase of looted antiquities, I traced out a case, that I mentioned before in the context of fake conflict antiquities, that intertwined destruction and looting in Syria; behaviour of law enforcement agencies in source and transit countries and businesses in market countries; the politics and economics of the war in Syria; and propaganda within Syria, across the region and around the world.

in the line of fire: cultural heritage in hybrid warfare – occupation, destruction, trafficking, espionage and propaganda

At the seminar on archaeology in occupied territories and in zones of armed conflict, I (Сем Харді) explored cultural heritage in hybrid warfare – occupation, destruction, trafficking, espionage and propaganda.

prosecutors and prosecutions in antiquities trafficking cases in Turkey: uncertainty in information, uncertainty in rule of law

As BBC News correspondent Mark Lowen has explained, the citizens of Turkey are both ‘addicted to conspiracy theories’ and ‘besieged by “fake news”‘. The problem is worsened by government-aligned ‘fake fact-checkers’, while it is resisted by sincere truth-seekers such as the citizen journalists of Teyit (Confirmation or Verification).

While news about cultural property crime in Turkey is blighted more by churnalism than by propaganda, like everything else, it is burdened by uncertainty of information and uncertainty of rule of law. This is demonstrated by the career of one prosecutor, who has hit the headlines once more.

a very preliminary review of destruction, trafficking and politics of heritage in social media of Russian trolls

troll factories: the Internet Research Agency and state-sponsored agenda building

Identified members of a Russian state-linked propaganda outlet, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), are being prosecuted for participating in ‘a sophisticated and coordinated campaign to sow disinformation and discord into American politics via social media’, ‘interfering in American electoral and political processes’. Journalist Jim Galloway has captured the logic of much of the activity: ‘let’s you and him fight’.

Illegal finders of antiquities in Ukraine: do digital data indicate grassroots growth, coincidence, false advertising, astroturfing, trolling or sockpuppetry?

I am delighted to say that Ukrainian Archaeology – particularly Ukrainian Archaeology – has published my (open-access) study of illegal finders of antiquities in Ukraine: do digital data indicate grassroots growth, coincidence, false advertising, astroturfing, trolling or sockpuppetry?

Maltai, Dohuk, KRG, Iraq: Peshmerga have not used ancient Assyrian art for target practice

[Evidently, it is necessary for me to explain: yes, I do object to nationalists who vandalise cultural property; and yes, I am concerned with the suffering of the Assyrian community, as I am with the suffering of other civilian communities. In my work on state crime, I have highlighted how plunder of cultural property was a constituent element of the genocide of Assyrians.]

Based on multiple media reports and social media comments, I tweeted that Peshmerga had ‘practiced shooting and painted [a] flag on [the] ancient Assyrian city of Khenis (Dohuk, KRG, Iraq)’. Thankfully, Simone Muehl quickly pointed out that this was wrong.

If Americans are scared of refugees in Europe, there is a very simple solution for them – to not come to Europe

While this post is somewhat off-topic for this blog, the material is too offensive not to comment. foreign(?) Assadist propagandists, pathologically anti-Obama Islamophobic American propagandists, even seeming Serbian nationalists are appropriating evidence of illicit arms trafficking between Turkey and Libya in order to incite hatred of refugees from Syria and Iraq.

‘The smuggler had been smoking a cigarette when he pulled into an ISIS checkpoint’

When the Islamic State conquered Palmyra, ‘the world recoiled in horror, fearing [its] destruction’. The week after, Buzzfeed’s Mike Giglio ‘sat in a sunlit living room near the border with a looter from Palmyra who had spent much of the last 15 years robbing grave sites there’, and secured evidence for the events and processes that influence the flow of antiquities from vulnerable communities in Syria and Iraq to exploitative markets in the West.

Buzzfeed’s Mike Giglio’s been in Turkey’s borderlands after Syria’s looted antiquities

‘Over the course of a month’, Buzzfeed’s Mike Giglio ‘traveled along Turkey’s 565-mile-long border with Syria to meet more than a dozen people involved in this illegal trade, from the grave robbers and excavators who steal the artifacts to the middlemen and dealers who sell them.’

I couldn’t believe it when I spotted the matches for the antiquities from Palmyra, but Mark Altaweel, Michael Danti and Amr al-Azm confirmed it. I’ll write that update (to this post) tonight…