The Dark Side, FBI, Followed By The Noble Side of The FBI !!

Parole board member says FBI tried to intimidate him


By DENISE LAVOIE AP Legal Affairs Writer


BOSTON— A former member of the state Parole Board said Tuesday that two FBI agents tried to intimidate him into keeping a wrongly convicted man in prison for a 1960s gangland slaying.

Former Springfield Mayor Michael Albano, who served on the board from 1982 to 1994, testified in a lawsuit filed by the families of four men who say the FBI allowed them to be framed to protect a mobster informant.

Two of those men, Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone, spent more than 30 years in prison for the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan before being exonerated in 2001 when the Justice Department released documents showing the FBI withheld evidence from prosecutors that could have cleared the men so the agency could protect Vincent "Jimmy" Flemmi, an informant who actually committed the crime.

Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, who were also convicted in Deegan's killing, died in prison.

Lawyers for the men's families asked Albano if the FBI, after being contacted by the parole board as it considered petitions to commute their sentences, ever turned over evidence it had that the men were not involved in the murder of Deegan.

"No such information was provided," Albano testified.

Albano also made a brief reference in his testimony to a 1983 "unannounced visit" from former FBI Agents John Connolly, (pic top middle and left), and John Morris, (pic top right), as the board was considering a petition to commute Limone's sentence.

He was not asked to provide details of the visit during his testimony. But outside the courtroom, Albano said Connolly and Morris urged him to vote against commuting Limone's sentence and said that if he voted in favor of commuting his sentence it could hurt his career.

"They intimidated me and tried to get me to change my vote," Albano told reporters. "They said this was a bad crime ... that these defendants should remain incarcerated for the rest of their lives."

"They also said it probably would not bode well for me, if I wanted to remain in public life, that this would not be a good vote for me," he said.

Albano said he later voted with the majority of the 7-member board to commute Limone's sentence, but Gov. Michael Dukakis denied the petition.

Connolly is now serving a 10-year federal prison sentence for racketeering, obstruction of justice and other charges for protecting members of Boston's Winter Hill Gang - including fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger" - from prosecution while using them as FBI mob informants.

Connolly is awaiting trial on first-degree murder and conspiracy charges for allegedly providing information to members of the gang that led to the 1982 killing of former World Jai Alai President John Callahan.

Connolly's attorney, E. Peter Mullane, said Connolly denies the meeting described by Albano ever took place.

"John Connolly never met Mr. Albano under any circumstance, never spoke to him, never met him, never had any reason to meet him," he said.

Connolly was not an FBI agent in 1968 when the four men were convicted in Deegan's murder.

"He had no reason to want him paroled or not paroled," Mullane said.

Albano said the meeting took place just as he described. "I'll stand by my testimony," he said, when told of Mullane's comments.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the DOJ would have no comment on Albano's remarks because of the ongoing litigation.

In their lawsuit, the families of the four men convicted in Deegan's slaying accuse the federal government of malicious prosecution, conspiracy and depriving them of companionship.

Their lawyers say the FBI allowed Joseph "The Animal" Barboza - a mob assassin and FBI informant - to frame the four men.

After Deegan was shot in the head in a Chelsea alley, informants told FBI agents that Barboza, Flemmi and three other men were responsible, according to attorneys for the four men. But the FBI had recruited Flemmi as an informant and wanted to protect him so they allowed Barboza to frame Limone, Salvati, Greco and Tameleo.

Justice Department attorney Bridget Lipscomb said during opening statements at the trial that federal authorities had no duty to share information with state prosecutors and can't be held liable for the results of a separate state investigation. She also said that the four men had attorneys who raised doubts about Barboza's testimony at their trial.


"International Art Theft" presented by FBI Special Agent Robert K. Wittman Date: January 11, 2007 Time: 5:30 pm



Location: The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens


Contact: World Affairs Council of the Florida Palm Beaches
Phone: 561-254-1448


International Art Theft Presented by: FBI Special Agent Robert K. Wittman

Overview
Art and cultural property crime is the world's fourth-largest category of international crime, a growing black market today generating losses of up to $6 billion annually and a problem that is garnering increased attention from the FBI. The FBI's first specially dedicated unit for art crime, was established in November 2004 to step up U.S. response capabilities after the tragic looting of the National Museum in Baghdad.

At this special evening, the World Affairs Council of the Florida Palm Beaches hosts Special Agent Wittman who will discuss the United States' renewed efforts to break up crime rings that steal and smuggle priceless works of art, loot archaeological sites and churn out forgeries, as well as some of his own experiences in his almost 18 years on the FBI's art beat.

Doors open at 5:30pm and dinner can be purchased at The Cornell Cafe prior to the discussion beginning at 6:30pm. Tickets to this event are $20 and can be reserved online by visiting www.worldaffairsflorida.org and purchased at the door. For directions to The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, please click here.

Speaker's Biography
Special Agent Wittman, whose investigative work takes him around the world and often times undercover, has been responsible for the recovery of more than $150 million worth of stolen art and cultural property. Highlights include one of the original 14 copies of the Bill of Rights, a Rembrandt self-portrait, a 2,000-year-old pre-Columbian piece of body armor, five Norman Rockwell paintings, and a group of paintings, two by Spanish master Francisco Goya, from a private Madrid estate.

When he's not on an urgent case, Special Agent Wittman lectures often in an effort to teach others how to avoid becoming victims of theft or fraud. He has given presentations before such organizations as the American Association of Museums and has also represented the United States at numerous international conferences. He serves as a member of the Department of State's Cultural Antiquities Task Force in Washington. Special Agent Wittman is widely known and recognized for his expertise. In 2004, the Smithsonian Institution awarded Wittman the Robert Burke Memorial Award for Excellence in Cultural Property Protection.

Special Agent Wittman will discuss the United States' renewed efforts to break up crime rings that steal and smuggle priceless works of art, loot archaeological sites and churn out forgeries, as well as some of his own experiences in his almost 18 years on the FBI's art beat.

Art Hostage Comments:
This is just one of many reasons why Billboard Bob Wittman is "Yer man" as they say in Ireland, when it comes to recovering the stolen Vermeer.

Lord Haw Haw, Tokyo Rose, Ahron Cohen Let History be the Judge !!

Rabbi Ahron Cohen, above left.
Did they deserve it??????????????????

Guilty of What ??

Rabbi claims Holocaust dead ‘deserved it’
Maurice Chittenden

A BRITISH rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a “Holocaust denial” conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.

Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.

Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year because of his extremist views, told The Sunday Times: “There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses.

“However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another.

“We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.”

Cohen’s trip to Tehran — along with four American rabbis from the same sect — was paid for by the Iranian foreign ministry, which organised the conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision. They were warmly greeted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had two meetings with him.

Cohen ended his speech to the conference with a prayer “that the underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East, namely the state known as Israel, be totally and peacefully dissolved”.

The rabbi claimed “learned gentlemen from both sides of the fence” were at the latest conference. They included David Duke, former “imperial wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan.

Cohen said on his return: “President Ahmadinejad is not a man of war. He is a man of peace. I have received criticism for meeting him and attending the conference, but Jewish people are adopting an attitude of criticism from an emotional point of view, not a logical or sensible one.

“We know there was a Holocaust. We lived through it. I had relatives who died in it . . . But in no way must the Holocaust be used to further the aims of the Zionist concept.”

Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Jewish Ecclesiastical Court for Greater Manchester, said: “Rabbi Cohen has for a long time been ostracised by the vast majority of Jews for associating with and thus giving support and legitimacy to the enemies of Israel and the Jewish nation.

“He represents an insignificant minority. His involvement is a stab in the heart of the Jewish community and of all decent law-abiding people.”

Art Hostage comments:

"Evil be to him who Evil Think"

The FBI Fcuked President Bush Royally, Something Normally Akin To The British !!

The FBI Fcked President Royally

The FBI was supposed to investigate the background of those the President
nominates to his Administration.

The New York City former Police Chief and Bush Admin Superhero was discovered
to have domestic help he failed to properly report and an affair or two.

The FBI managed to discover this and it was enough to send Bernie Kerik
fleeing Washington with his tail between his legs.

But when Hal Daub was nominated to position in the Bush/Cheney World, the FBI
didn't bother to investigate the animal's alleged crimes he was never
brought to justice for despite being notified between nomination and
confirmation and provided details and victims/witnesses to contact.

They allowed George W. Bush to promote a serial rapist and poisoner of
children into his White House and then had to protect a rapist, lie to a
President, and betray a nation to keep their incompetence and complicity
from being discovered.

George Bush is going to freak out when he learns that Hal Daub is a serial
rapist and heroin pusher.
The remaining hairs on Karl Rove's head will soon be hitting the floor.

Daub will blackmail the President to keep it quiet, and the FBI will no
longer fear being disciplined for their treachery, but fear imprisonment for
it.

How's Whitey Bulger treating you G men these days? Did your two agents ever
survive their ten year prison sentences?

RAPE! It's not a crime of passion.

And rape is punishable by more than four terms in Congress no matter what
political affiliation.

Contact your rep in Congress. Let them know they have a serial rapist in the
US government. I welcome any investigation with open arms.

http://www.congress.org

Serial Rapist Harold John "Hal" Daub of the Bush Administration.
Harold's Bio

Death Row Confession of an Republican Rapist Conspirator Mary-Daub-and-Joe-Friend-Talking-About -
Hal-Daub

Rapist Administration's Hunting Ground in 1972
Lourdes Church

Art Hostage comments:
I sincerely hope this is untrue and Mr Daub is innocent.
However, if there is any truth in these allegations, and the FBI was told of these allegations, and the FBI did not check out these claims, then someone must be held accountable.


What Boston City Hall needs is an exorcist
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist
Somebody told me this week that Boston City Hall is for sale.
Isn’t it always?

Of course this is supposed to be different from all the earlier “sales.” This latest proposal would be on the level, with RFPs, public hearings and certified checks, as opposed to the customary City Hall currency - cash, in unmarked bills, exchanged with the lights low after a polite pat-down of the shakedownee, to ensure that no unsightly federal wires are attached to the armpits of what the indictments always describe as CW (Cooperating Witness).

As always, Mayor Mumbles Menino is on top of the situation. He knows exactly what the problem is with City Hall. It has too many floors, or, as he put it last week, floorses.
Here is Mumbles’ verbatim quote:
“The buildin’ is unworkable, I mean it doesn’t - it’s not conducive to, uh, customer friendly, uh, when you have so many different floorses, third floor on one side there’s no third on the other side, fourth floor on one side no - you know, and the public gets confused.”
Here is the problem with City Hall in one word, a word that Mumbles can neither define nor pronounce: mezzanine.
Personally, I hate the building. When I worked there, for more than a year in the ’80s, I used to have nightmares about falling endlessly through the back, concrete stairwells.
Have you ever walked across City Hall Plaza in the winter? It’s so cold that city councilors keep their hands in their own pockets.
But let’s face it: If Mumbles did raze City Hall and give the land (which is what you know he’d do - wink wink, nudge nudge) to private developers, all you’d end up with is another crime-ridden Downtown Crossing. Still, anything would be an improvement over Government Center, especially if Tommy Tsoumos is finally allowed to open his sanctuary for weary businessmen, the Foxy Lady Downtown, where the first shot is on the house, and after that you have to use your own bullets.cw-3
City Hall may be a dismal place, yet there is an argument to be made, as the preservationists did this week, that it is a historic site.
Put it on the National Register of Historic Bad Buildings.
Think of all the Boston lore you’d be destroying if you tore it down. What giants strode those halls. Every Wednesday’s City Council meeting wasn’t just a civics class, it was a spelling lesson. I still recall Freddy Langone bellowing, “Who ate at the Parkman House? Who? H-W-O-H, who?”
And Pat McDonough thundering, “Anyone who votes for this is politically dead. D-E-D, dead.”
I could direct the FBI’s Violent Fugitive Task Force to at least two locations where hand-written correspondence from one James J. Whitey Bulger is filed. One is at the Boston Retirement Board, where he listed his brother Billy’s address as his own, and the other is at - well, I’ll keep that to myself for now. There is a $1 million bounty at stake, after all.

And then there was the city budget director who filed for disability after claiming he slipped on a patch of ice - inside City Hall. His name was Squawker, and the feds indicted him because they wanted to turn him into Squealer.
Remember the high-ranking female appointee, still at City Hall, who attended the Mafia induction in Medford back in 1989, and who was later promoted after her FBI surveillance photo appeared in the papers.
What Stonehenge is to the Druids, Boston City Hall is to the hackerama. You can’t tear it down, no matter how hideous it is. Mumbles, forget the appraisers, what you need is an exorcist. And make sure they sprinkle holy water on all the floors.

Art Hostage comments:
It is about time the Foxes were banned from guarding the Hen House.


Dukakis testifies in Limone trial

By Shelley Murphy
Globe Staff

Former Governor Michael S. Dukakis testified Wednesday that he carefully considered every inmate’s request for clemency in the 1980s, even reviewing case files at home at night before deciding whether they should be set free.

But Dukakis said he only recalled one instance when the state’s top federal prosecutor weighed in on a clemency petition — in 1983, when then US Attorney William F. Weld urged him to reject Peter J. Limone’s bid for freedom.

Considering how ‘‘unusual’’ it was to get such a letter, Dukakis said he gave ‘‘substantial’’ weight to Weld’s warning that Limone would ‘‘assume charge of the day-to-day operations of organized crime in this area’’ if released.

The governor said he urged the governor’s council not to commute the life sentences of Limone and his codefendant, Louis Greco, in the 1980s, but obviously would have felt differently if he knew the men had been wrongfully convicted of the 1965 gangland slaying of petty thief Edward ‘‘Teddy’’ Deegan in Chelsea.

Dukakis, who served as governor from 1975 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1990, was called to the stand in a civil trial, where Limone, Joseph Salvati, and the families of Greco and Henry Tameleo, who are both dead, are seeking more than $100 million from the government for falsely imprisoning the men.

Later, on his way out of the courthouse, Dukakis said it was ‘‘disgraceful’’ that two Italian-American members of the parole board were investigated by the FBI for alleged ties to organized crime after they voted to commute Limone’s sentence in 1983.

‘‘Now that we know what was going on in the (FBI) office, we were all deceived,’’ said Dukakis, referring to the racketeering conviction of former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. for his handling of longtime informants James ‘‘Whitey’’ Bulger and Stephen ‘‘The Rifleman’’ Flemmi, and to the murder indictment of former FBI agent H. Paul Rico, who died in jail while awaiting trial. ‘‘In fact, the bureau itself was betrayed.’’

Limone and Salvati spent more than 30 years in prison before they were exonerated five years ago after the revelation that secret FBI reports, never turned over at their 1968 trial, indicated they had been framed by the government’s key witness, Mafia hitman Joseph ‘‘The Animal’’ Barboza. Tameleo and Greco died in prison.

Dukakis acknowledged he knew nothing about allegations that then-FBI agent Dennis Condon was aware Barboza was lying and yet vouched for his credibility during the trial.

But on the stand, Dukakis defended the integrity of Condon, who served as public safety commissioner during his administration. He later told reporters, ‘‘There really wasn’t a better public servant walking the earth, in my opinion.’’

Barboza testified during the 1968 trial that Limone, who allegedly had ties to organized crime, paid him $7,500 to kill Deegan and that Tameleo, the mob’s reputed consigliere, sanctioned the hit. Barboza, who was given leniency for his cooperation, claimed Salvati and Greco participated in the slaying.

In earlier testimony Wednesday, former defense attorney F. Lee Bailey testified that Barboza confided to him two years after the convictions that Rico was part of a plot to frame the four men.

Bailey said Barboza claimed that Rico told him the FBI wanted to prosecute ‘‘high-profile’’ organized crime figures and suggested he implicate Tameleo and Limone in Deegan’s slaying.

‘‘He said he was told (by Rico) to give us two and you can name two,’’ said Bailey, adding that Barboza added Salvati and Greco because he disliked them.

Bailey said Barboza admitted protecting one of the true killers, his close friend Vincent ‘‘Jimmy’’ Flemmi, who was also an FBI informant. Flemmi, who died in prison in 1979, was the brother of longtime FBI informant, Stephen Flemmi.

Bailey said he agreed to represent Barboza in his recantation, but only after the mobster said he would take a lie detector test. But Bailey said the test was never given.

Barboza’s possible recantation became public in 1970 when he signed an affidavit saying portions of his trial testimony were false. But later Barboza told federal prosecutors he was only pretending to recant as part of a plot to extort money from local Mafia leaders, according to court records.

Barboza was gunned down by another mobster in 1976 in San Francisco.

Rico died in January 2004, in jail, awaiting trial on charges that he helped Bulger and Stephen Flemmi orchestrate the 1981 slaying of Tulsa businessman Roger Wheeler.

Photo, That's a Work of Art Itself !!

G.I. JOES TO THE RESCUE OF REMBRANDTS AND RAPHAELS

Written by RANDY KENNEDY

Tuesday, 19 December 2006

Through the centuries many people have been haunted by the work of Raphael, but probably few have been haunted in quite the same way as Bernard Taper.

Even now, at 88, he says he finds a certain painting continuing to surface in his memory. It is an elegant portrait of a young man that Mr. Taper knew in 1947 only from a black-and-white photograph he had been given, much in the way a detective is handed a snapshot of a missing person.

At that time, in the ruinous aftermath of World War II in Europe, the Raphael portrait was one of the most prominent masterpieces to have disappeared, but it had considerable company. Thousands of paintings, sculptures and artifacts that had been looted by the Nazis — many of them bound for Hitler’s long-envisioned Führer Museum in Linz, Austria, his boyhood home, or confiscated for the collection of Hermann Goering, Hitler’s chief art-looting rival — remained missing at war’s end.

Mr. Taper, then an Army lieutenant charged with tracking down the Raphael, spent months interrogating jailed Nazis and trying to connect the dots, but he never found the painting, which had been taken from a family museum in Krakow, Poland.

“I still dream about it sometimes,” he said in a recent interview. “I wonder if it’s out there.”

The story might sound like grist for a Dan Brown novel or a Steven Spielberg treatment. But the efforts of Allied officers and soldiers like Mr. Taper to save and repatriate stolen treasures during and after the war is a chapter of World War II history still not particularly well known. Even during the war their work — when compared with saving lives and preserving ways of life — was sometimes discounted. Some members of the military referred to these soldiers as “Venus fixers,” a term with more than a hint of the effete.

But the accomplishments of these soldiers, better known as the Monuments Men, are finally starting to come into sharper focus. “Rescuing Da Vinci,” a lavishly illustrated book devoted to them, with dozens of pictures newly unearthed from archives, has just been published by Robert M. Edsel, a retired Texas oilman. Mr. Edsel, 49, became obsessed with the story several years ago and even established a research office in Dallas, his hometown, with the goal of telling it better.

This month, in large part because of his work, Congress passed a resolution honoring the Monuments Men (whose number also included some women and civilians), saying that the value of their work “cannot be overstated and set a moral precedent” for the preservation of culture.

Mr. Edsel, who came late to an appreciation of art history, said in a recent interview that he became aware of the vast art-rescue story when he was living in Florence in the late 1990s and read “The Rape of Europa,” an award-winning book by Lynn H. Nicholas that chronicles the Third Reich’s pillaging of museums, churches and private collections.

The book goes into considerable detail about the formation and work of what became the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the United States military, some of whose members had art backgrounds and would go on to become civilian art-world luminaries, like James J. Rorimer, a future director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Lincoln Kirstein, then a lowly private but later a founder of the New York City Ballet. Most of the recovery effort was American, but soldiers from more than a dozen countries also participated.

Mr. Edsel quickly became frustrated, he said, as he combed through other World War II history books and found surprisingly little about what he thought was a gripping story of high-culture derring-do. “To me,” he said, “it was like, wow, you wrote a western and left out John Wayne. I couldn’t believe it.”

Armed with the kind of bluster and directness that made him wealthy in the oil business, Mr. Edsel sought out Ms. Nicholas “pretty much cold, ” he recalls. He asked for her guidance in putting together a book devoted exclusively to the Monuments Men, a book he eventually published himself, he said, because he got “absolutely no interest” from commercial publishers.

He paid researchers who set to work in Washington, Moscow, Munich and other cities. Even as this work was under way, he said, he knew that professionals in the art world like Nancy Yeide, curator of records at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, whom he approached about finding pictures, wondered whether he was just a well-meaning dilettante.

“I could tell that she didn’t know whether to trust me, whether to think I was a kook, whether it was like some vanity project,” he said.

But Mr. Edsel kept at it, putting $2.5 million of his own money toward the project. Over time he also became a co-producer of a documentary based on Ms. Nicholas’s book, which is now making the rounds of film festivals. He is planning exhibitions of the photographs and archival material featured in the book and is now crisscrossing the country trying to find and interviewing the few living members of the Monuments Men squad, like Mr. Taper.

“The problem is, we’re in a race with time now,” Mr. Edsel said in a recent interview in New York.

The urgency of that race was underlined last month by the death of S. Lane Faison Jr., 98, an art-rescue officer who worked for the Office of Strategic Services, which helped the Monuments Men. Mr. Faison later became a renowned art professor at Williams College whose students went on to become directors and curators at many prominent American museums.

Mr. Edsel interviewed Mr. Faison before his death and tracked down several other former officers who helped recover thousands of paintings and artifacts. One, Harry Ettlinger, now 80, joined the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives in 1945 and was assigned to sort out the contents of a vast makeshift storehouse in Heilbronn, Germany. It was a salt mine where the Nazis had hidden thousands of crates of loot, including all the stained glass removed from the Strasbourg Cathedral in France, which Mr. Ettlinger helped return.

In Mr. Edsel’s book Mr. Ettlinger can be seen in a crisp black-and-white photograph that could serve as the inspiration for a climactic movie scene: he and an officer are standing deep in the mine, staring in awe at a Rembrandt self-portrait that has just been raised from its crate.

But in a telephone interview Mr. Ettlinger said that much of the work done by the Monuments Men was not particularly cinematic. It was the tedious but immense job of archiving, translating documents, collating records and extracting needles from thousands of haystacks to ensure that works returned to their rightful homes. And it was frustrating: for every paper trail that led to a restitution, there were many more that led nowhere, and priceless works that were never found.

Of course, in the midst of the paperwork, there was a little wartime drama every so often down in the mine shafts, Mr. Ettlinger recalled.

“I remember once in a hallway I saw a doorway that was bricked in and no one knew what was behind it,” he said. He ordered someone to find out. “And lo and behold it was nitroglycerin, which was about to come along and blow us all to kingdom come, never mind the art.”

Mr. Edsel said the more he delved into the stories of the men, the more amazed he became at how little Americans seem to know about it, especially in an era with a newfound devotion to the Greatest Generation.

So, he was asked, is a feature film somewhere down the road?

He smiled and, in his best Texas dare-me voice, said not to rule it out.

“This has got heroes,” he said. “It’s got buried treasure. It’s got untold stories. It’s got everything. You want excitement? We’ve got it in spades right here.”


Salem church sets storied silver work on auction block

By Charles A. Radin, Boston Globe Staff | December 19, 2006

SALEM -- Selling the family silver is generally an act of financial distress, but at one of the oldest churches in North America, the situation is just the opposite.

The First Church in Salem, which was founded in 1629 and counted victims as well as judges in the Salem witch trials among its early members, is auctioning off 14 silver tankards, flagons, and beakers in hope of raising $1 million to accelerate growth in membership and programming that began in the late 1990s.

Most of the money will go to making the gray granite church building, which opened in 1836, fully accessible to people who are disabled.

The sale is embraced by a congregation whose roots stretch back to when Roger Williams, the third minister at the church, was shown the door in 1635 for preaching that was considered too radical. He went on to found Rhode Island.

"Our understanding of what is sacred has changed over the centuries," the Rev. Jeffrey Barz-Snell, First Church's pastor, said in an interview yesterday. Rather than hoard prized silver possessions dating to centuries when diversity of any kind was little tolerated, "the people involved in our church now are more concerned with other people, and with the broader community," he said.

The church is selling a fraction of its 70-piece collection, but some of the most important items in American silvercraft are going on the auction block Jan. 18.

They include a cup given to the church by John Higginson, a Salem merchant who interviewed alleged witches and witnesses and recorded their confessions during the Salem witch trials of 1692; a beaker made in 1670 by Jeremiah Dummer, the first native-born American silversmith; and a tankard by John Coney between 1690 and 1710, featuring a European baroque style found in American silver only in the work of Boston smiths.

The sale "is wildly exciting from an antique silver perspective," said Jeanne Sloane, head of the silver department at Christie's, the auction house handling the sale, which was first reported in The Salem News.

"When silver has been the property of a church, we know its provenance, and it has been under terrific care, not left out, not polished too much, not suffering from excessive wear."

In addition, she said, "the early congregations were radically Puritan, so they threw off the trappings of the Anglican high church predecessors they were rebelling against. You do not get engraved crucifixions . . . The pieces are not different from the regular kind of American silver that collectors want."

Sloane said that the goal of the auction is $1 million in sales, but that "there is no ceiling."

"If a couple of people decide this is the opportunity of a lifetime, you can get a price over the high estimate," she said.

That estimate includes valuations of $300,000 for the Coney tankard, $250,000 for the Dummer beaker, and $120,000 for the Higginson cup.

A flagon weighing more than 40 ounces, which Sloane called the single most important piece of silver ever made in Salem, is also to be auctioned, with an estimated top value of $120,000.

First Church will retain a Paul Revere silver set it uses for communion on special occasions, as well as a silver bowl used in baptisms here for more than 200 years.

This is the second high-profile sale of early American silver by a Massachusetts church in recent years. In 2001, United First Parish Church in Quincy, which was founded in 1639 and is the burial place of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, sold 11 pieces, the value of which at auction had been estimated at around $1 million. The pieces sold for about $3 million.

In that sale, some people, including a former pastor, complained that the church was selling off its heritage; others were unhappy with the sale but felt the church had no choice, given a dwindling membership and a desperate need to fund repairs.

First Church in Salem has no such problems, Barz-Snell said.

"There is no urgency pushing this," he said. "It is the recognition that the church is growing, Salem is growing, and the church is poised, as a progressive Christian church, to become more involved with the broader community."

He said that the Unitarian church's membership is now about 130, about double what it was when he became pastor in 1998. He said two deacons proposed selling some of the highly valued silver after it became apparent that $300,000, raised from the membership to make the church handicapped accessible, was far short of what was needed.

"The decision was made by a democratic vote after considerable debate," Barz-Snell said.

"What is most important for us is the ability to serve our [church] community and the broader community," he said.

"Part of that is maintaining a building that is well maintained and accessible to all."

Thieves have attempted to steal the church's silver collection in the past, he said, stressing that the silver is stored in a secure location away from the church premises.

Art Hostage comments:

Hopefully the new owners of these silver pieces will loan them to public institutions so the public has access to them.
All too often,wonderful works of art are locked away, not only in private collections, but in bank vaults.

Art Crime Gang One Step Ahead of Bungling Police !!

Veteran lawyer Michael Morse, above, was accused of being a mastermind of a criminal gang that targeted antique stores and auction houses. All charges against him were dropped last week in court.

Connecting the dots in art-theft 'project'

The case unravels against a colourful cast of characters accused of high-end heists

BETSY POWELL AND PETER SMALL

STAFF REPORTERS

It started with great fanfare two years ago and last week it appeared to unravel with the vindication of the supposed mastermind of one of its "cells," a veteran lawyer and Crown attorney.In October 2004, Toronto police announced they had cracked a theft ring that had been targeting high-end antique stores and auction houses. On display was some of the confiscated loot — an eclectic array of watches, coins, lamps, jewellery and designer coats, with an estimated value of $750,000.The charge sheet contained a colourful cast of characters besides the criminal lawyer, including a charming, old-time crook, two Russian brothers and a man once accused in a legendary court case.Police called it "Project Antique." Two years on, most of the original charges have either been dropped, thrown out or stayed. Then, last week in Superior Court, Justice Ian Nordheimer acquitted lawyer Michael Morse of all the charges he was facing. Charges against co-accused Joseph Gagne were also dropped, while Wayne Hines was convicted of weapons charges but nothing relating directly to the burglaries."The right hand of the Toronto police didn't know what the left hand of the Toronto police was doing," Morse said in an interview. Officers did not communicate basic facts to one another, take proper notes, or follow up obvious leads, Morse charged. He said it was only through the investigation that he and his lawyer, Anthony Bryant, conducted that key information was uncovered that cleared his name."It was Police Officer 101," Morse said. "They didn't have to go through all kinds of surveillance and employing officers of various squads to do this and that over a six-month period and spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars."Darryl Vincent, who turned 68 last week, had his charges stayed this fall while a single charge against Penny Sherman, 64, and six against Ira Hussey, 58, have also disappeared from the docket. Only Sergei Khatchaturov, 30, and sibling Yurii Khatchaturov, 24, still face charges connected to Project Antique.The genesis of the six-month investigation is almost as interesting as the ragtag group rounded up. Despite first appearances, those arrested as part of the two "cells" involved in "the organized theft of valuable artworks and antiques" were not connected in any way except by "absolute fluke, lucky" circumstances, says Rob Whelan, one of the investigators and now a sergeant at 55 Division.Connecting the dots poses a challenge.Some believe that what launched Project Antique was the high-profile theft in early 2004 of late billionaire Ken Thomson's treasured statues from a display case at the Art Gallery of Ontario.An elated Thomson got his statues back a day after police released video images from AGO security cameras showing "persons of interest" in the case. Lawyer Dennis Morris turned them over to police, citing solicitor-client privilege for keeping the identity of the suspects secret.The investigation, the public was told, was continuing.That was not the case. Much to the dismay of some officers involved in the AGO investigation, police brass — including former deputy chief Steve Reesor and with the knowledge of then Toronto police chief Julian Fantino — closed the file.But police who felt justice wasn't served started tailing the suspects, the Khatchaturov brothers, known to be clients of Morris. After it was robbed, Vincent and the older Khatchaturov were arrested.

`The right hand of the Toronto police didn't know what the left hand of the Toronto police was doing' Michael Morse, acquitted lawyer

Meanwhile, police investigating a January 2004 break-in at LuluLemon apparel store on Yonge St. zeroed in on international art thief Raymond Hobin, who was not above more mundane break and enters. It turned out he and Morse were co-signers for a Somerville rental truck similar to one seen leaving LuluLemon. Morse testified that he rented the truck partly so that Hobin, who he thought was a professional landscape architect, could conduct work at his home in east Toronto. Morse said that he had befriended Hobin, a sometime client, despite his criminal past, believing that he was trying to go straight in order to retain custody of his son.On April 14, 2004, police arrested Hobin in the LuluLemon break-in and in connection with another B and E at Norwalk the Furniture Idea, also on Yonge. When police questioned Hobin, who likely faced a long prison term if convicted, he claimed that he was coerced into the break-ins. He said Morse extorted him into joining his small ring of high-end antique-store thieves that included Hines and Gagne.He told police they targeted antique stores and other businesses to fulfill Morse's wish list."The police bought it hook, line and sinker," Morse's lawyer, Bryant, told the judge during the trial. "Raymond Hobin is not just a career criminal. He is a master con artist who has an uncanny ability to turn things inside out and upside down."Hobin took police on a tour, pointing out stores the gang had targeted. He said that Morse had stashed in his home two expensive tapestries the gang had stolen from Kantelberg Antiques on Davenport Rd. Police enlisted Hobin as their agent in a sting operation principally targeting Morse. In return he hoped for lenient treatment. A police source says investigators soon came to suspect the alleged Morse-led gang and AGO thieves were related "cells."In 2004, a surveillance team followed Morse to a house belonging to Penny Sherman, the one time "old squeeze" of a well-known Toronto rounder with her own criminal past. The police suspected Morse of laundering money though Sherman, his friend and former client, although the only charge laid against her in Project Antique — conspiracy to commit an indictable offence — was dropped last year. The net was cast wider, as it often is during these kinds of investigations, when Vincent literally walked onto the scene. "We followed Morse to Sherman's house, Morse leaves, and this unknown person to us, Darryl Vincent, shows up," says one of the police on the surveillance detail. Vincent and Sherman go back more than 40 years. One of the officers recognized the thief, whose criminal career stretches back five decades. This account then has the officers following Vincent, who leads them to an antique store in the company of another man. John Struthers was Vincent's lawyer. Sherman "sort of put a circle through it all," he said this week, sounding bemused about how Project Antique unfolded. "Darryl has some infamy with respect to thieving in Canada, but at the same time I'm not sure he had anything to do with any of this," said Struthers. "It's a strange world because people who are that good at thieving seem to somehow figure out who each other is."Vincent is less amused."You guys are being totally, totally used by the police," he said referring to media outlets who reported on the initial arrests. "They turned something that was never a project into a project."He also believes the police, "pissed off" about how the AGO theft was handled, targeted the Russians. Vincent, a veteran of art heists, was under surveillance after the thefts occurred, but denies having any part of it.Vincent has recovered most of the property seized by investigators and, not surprisingly, impugns their motives."They have to justify being paid. You have to get so many charges. That's why they have these RIDE programs right now — they're totally illegal, in my view," he says, adding that he's aware the Supreme Court of Canada sees it differently.

Who's Who


Five of those who faced charges in connection with Project Antique

Darryl Vincent, 68, has a criminal record that goes back 45 years with the vast majority of his run-ins with police involving the theft of high-end goods. He also has been convicted of similar crimes in several other parts of the world.

Penny Sherman (formerly Penny Yankula), who turns 65 next month, is no stranger to the criminal justice system. She was once charged with trafficking heroin and possessing a stolen mink coat.

Ira Hussey, 48, was one of the accused men in the so-called Askov case, in which charges were thrown out by the Supreme Court of Canada because they took too long to get to trial. In 1989, he was among 14 men charged after a police investigation into the $2 million theft of transport trailers packed with televisions, stereos and other pricey items.

Michael Morse, 59, is a defence lawyer who has practised for 30 years, including as a prosecutor. He is a married father of two boys, and collects antiques as a hobby. Police claimed he was the mastermind of a high-end antiques theft ring, but a judge acquitted him of all charges last Friday.

Raymond Hobin, 49, is an international art thief with multiple criminal convictions and several stints in jail. He was the Crown's star witness against Morse and two co-accused in the alleged antiques theft ring. A judge called him a charming con artist whose testimony was highly suspect. Morse called him the Prince of Darkness.

Italian police uncover art theft ring

Italian police uncover art theft ring

By MARTA FALCONI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ROME -- Italian police said Thursday they have uncovered an international art trafficking ring based in Rome and have recovered about 100 artifacts.

Rome Carabinieri police said 35 people, including an architect and an antique dealer, are being investigated in connection with charges ranging from illegal possession to trafficking of archaeological artifacts. They were not arrested.

The two-year investigation focused on cities including Rome, Naples and Palermo.

Police said all the artifacts were stolen over the past 20 years, and that at least some had been destined to a foreign market.

One item, a 17th-century still life by Italian painter Pietro Paolo Bonzi - stolen from a private collection - had been smuggled to France, and investigators were looking into a possible link to Florida, said Carabinieri Maj. Salvatore Altavilla. He declined to provide more details, as the investigation is still under way

"Again, Rome becomes the crossroads of art thefts," Carabinieri official Alessandro Casarsa told a news conference. "Art thefts are like double thefts: You steal the artifact from its owner but also prevent other people from enjoying it."

Also recovered was a 660-pound marble altar front with mosaics dating from the 12th century, which had been stolen near Naples in November 2003; a decorated silver head of Saint Gregory; a second-century Roman child's sarcophagus and religious paintings.

Police started the investigation in 2004 after recovering a marble piece on sale in an antiquities shop in downtown Rome.

Italy is aggressively combatting the pillage of its archaeological and artistic treasures. Its campaign also includes seeking the return of several antiquities it claims were obtained by museums illegally.

Earlier this week, an ancient statue and a marble head that were stolen in Rome in the 1980s were returned to Italy after authorities traced them to New York and Barcelona, Spain.

German police recover stolen painting

Mannheim, Germany (dpa) - A stolen painting estimated to be worth half a million euros (650,000 dollars) has been recovered by German police, nine months after art thieves took it from the Mannheim Art Gallery in the southwest of the country.


The picture, Peacetime, by Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885), depicts a 19th-century soldier guarding a fort that is being overwhelmed by vines.

Police said Thursday the painting was recovered the previous evening near the city where it was stolen late on March 18 and one person was arrested. Police said they would give more details later.

The 25-by-49-centimetre oil painting, which had been in the gallery for more than 100 years, is typical of the Biedermeier period of German art.

The gallery admitted security had been lax while workers were preparing a new exhibition in a closed part of the gallery where the painting was hanging.

Honest Antiques Dealer, A True Oxymoron !!

TV antiques expert accused of stealing paintings from elderly woman


An antiques expert who regularly appears on BBC's Bargain Hunt appeared in court on Wednesday charged with stealing two paintings worth thousands of pounds from a pensioner.

Michael Hogben, (above), 54, the star of BBC shows Bargain Hunt, Real Deal and Auction Man appeared at Folkestone Magistrates charged with two counts of theft.

The court heard how the flamboyant TV star allegedly stole a portrait and landscape painting from the elderly woman’s home between June and November 2005.

Prosecutor Anna Kachingwe said the pensioner contacted Hogben, who lives in Hythe, to ask him to value a number of pieces of antique furniture she wanted to sell.

"Mr Hogben worked as an auctioneer before selling his business in 2004.

"The defendant took a particular interest in two of the paintings - one a portrait, the other a landscape.

Ms Kachingwe said Hogben offered to have the paintings valued by an expert.

She claimed Hogben then took them away and that the woman had not seen them since.

She added: “She has not received any money for them either. The paintings were not received at the auction house.

“We do not have an exact value for the paintings but we would like this case to go crown court due to the high value of the paintings that were taken.”

Hogben, whose best man at his wedding was TV funnyman Vic Reeves, spoke only to confirm his name and address in the 10-minute hearing.

The TV star’s defence lawyer Jim Morrisson said: “Mr Hogben vehemently denies these allegations.”

The case has been adjourned until January 17 next year.

Art Hostage comments:

If Hogben produces the paintings before or at the next court appearance, then there will not be a case to answer. Some kind of excuse about a misunderstanding, or memory loss will serve the purpose.

However, if Hogben has sold these paintings and that can be proved, even if Hogben retrieves the paintings in the meantime, there is certainly a case to be answered.

Art Hostage

Art Hostage, Churchill Spirit Lives on to smash Record Price for unrecorded oil painting $1.2 million !!

Churchill, Unrecorded Gem, smashes Record Price !!

Churchill oil sells for £612,800 $1.2 million

LONDON A previously unknown painting by Sir Winston Churchill sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for a record £612,800, nearly three times its estimate.

View of Tinherir, an oil on canvas, was painted in one of Churchill’s favourite retreats, Marrakesh, in 1951. He gave it as a token of friendship to the American general George C. Marshall, the author of the Marshall Plan. Churchill called the general “the last great American” and “the true architect of victory”.



By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) - A painting by wartime leader Winston Churchill sold for 612,800 pounds at auction on Monday, easily beating the previous record for the part-time artist and three times the pre-sale estimate.

"View of Tinherir" was painted in 1951 in Marrakech, Morocco, and given two years later to U.S. General George Marshall, whom Churchill considered "the last great American".

"Most significant is the provenance of this painting," said Sarah Thomas, an expert at Sotheby's which sold the work. "It was a gift by Churchill to a statesman whom he respected and revered enormously.

"Obviously also there is the 'lost painting' factor -- it was not known about before we were made aware of it."

According to Sotheby's, it has remained in the Marshall family since 1953 and was sold by award-winning actress Kitty Winn, grand-daughter of the general. It had been expected to fetch 150-250,000 pounds.

The previous auction record for a Churchill painting was 344,000 pounds for "On the Rance, Near St. Malo" set in 2005.

The successful telephone bidder asked to remain anonymous, and Sotheby's would only say that the painting went to a private collector who had expressed an interest in the work before Monday's sale.

"View of Tinherir" was painted in the year that Churchill returned to the office of prime minister and six years after the Allied victory in World War Two.


Churchill had a long association with Morroco, but remembered it foremost as the site for the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 where U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's delegation included Marshall.

The painting he presented to Marshall was one of at least three Moroccan landscapes he gave away as gifts to leading U.S. figures. The other two went to Dwight Eisenhower and Roosevelt himself, according to Sotheby's.

Marshall, who initiated the Marshall Plan to help war-ravaged countries of Europe recover, came to Britain in 1953 to attend Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and Churchill gave him the painting during that visit.

Overall the Sotheby's sale of 20th Century British art fetched more than 7.5 million pounds including the auctioneer's premium, a new record for the company.

Art hostage comments:

Here are a few classic Churchill quotes to use on your friends or enemies over the holidays:



A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill

A joke is a very serious thing.
Winston Churchill

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Winston Churchill

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
Winston Churchill

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
Winston Churchill

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Winston Churchill

Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.
Winston Churchill

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Winston Churchill

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.
Winston Churchill

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
Winston Churchill

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.
Winston Churchill

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
Winston Churchill

By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach.
Winston Churchill

Clement Attlee is a modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.
Winston Churchill

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Winston Churchill

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Winston Churchill

Danger - if you meet it promptly and without flinching - you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Winston Churchill

Death came very easily to her. She had lived such an innocent and loving life of service to others and held such a simple faith, that she had no fears at all and did not seem to mind very much.
Winston Churchill

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Winston Churchill

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
Winston Churchill

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
Winston Churchill

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Winston Churchill

Eating words has never given me indigestion.
Winston Churchill

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Winston Churchill

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
Winston Churchill

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
Winston Churchill

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Winston Churchill

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Winston Churchill

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
Winston Churchill

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.
Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Winston Churchill

I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.
Winston Churchill

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.
Winston Churchill

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.
Winston Churchill

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill

I am bored with it all.
Winston Churchill

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
Winston Churchill

I am easily satisfied with the very best.
Winston Churchill

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Winston Churchill

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
Winston Churchill

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
Winston Churchill

I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence-which is a noble thing.
Winston Churchill

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
Winston Churchill

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
Winston Churchill

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
Winston Churchill

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston Churchill

I like a man who grins when he fights.
Winston Churchill

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
Winston Churchill

I never worry about action, but only inaction.
Winston Churchill

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.
Winston Churchill

I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.
Winston Churchill

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
Winston Churchill

If I was your wife Sir, I'd poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I'd let you!
Winston Churchill

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
Winston Churchill

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
Winston Churchill

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
Winston Churchill

If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
Winston Churchill

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
Winston Churchill

If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
Winston Churchill

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.
Winston Churchill

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Winston Churchill

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
Winston Churchill

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Winston Churchill

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
Winston Churchill

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Winston Churchill

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Winston Churchill

It is a remarkable comment on our affairs that the former prime minister of a great sovereign state should thus be received as an honorary citizen of another.
Winston Churchill

It is all right to rat, but you can't re-rat.
Winston Churchill

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
Winston Churchill

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
Winston Churchill

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
Winston Churchill

It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
Winston Churchill

It's no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
Winston Churchill

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
Winston Churchill

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
Winston Churchill

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Winston Churchill

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.
Winston Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
Winston Churchill

Most people stumble over the truth, now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway.
Winston Churchill

Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.
Winston Churchill

My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto.
Winston Churchill

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
Winston Churchill

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
Winston Churchill

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
Winston Churchill

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Winston Churchill

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Winston Churchill

Never, never, never give up.
Winston Churchill

"No comment" is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
Winston Churchill

No crime is so great as daring to excel.
Winston Churchill

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Winston Churchill

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
Winston Churchill

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.
Winston Churchill

No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.
Winston Churchill

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
Winston Churchill

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Winston Churchill

One does not leave a convivial party before closing time.
Winston Churchill

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Winston Churchill

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.
Winston Churchill

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
Winston Churchill

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.
Winston Churchill

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
Winston Churchill

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Winston Churchill

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.
Winston Churchill

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Winston Churchill

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
Winston Churchill

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Winston Churchill

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.
Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
Winston Churchill

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
Winston Churchill

Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is - the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
Winston Churchill

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.
Winston Churchill

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam.
Winston Churchill

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.
Winston Churchill

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.
Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
Winston Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Winston Churchill

The first quality that is needed is audacity.
Winston Churchill

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy's aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.
Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.
Winston Churchill

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
Winston Churchill

The maxim of the British people is "Business as usual."
Winston Churchill

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.
Winston Churchill

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.
Winston Churchill

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
Winston Churchill

The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Winston Churchill

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
Winston Churchill

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.
Winston Churchill

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
Winston Churchill

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
Winston Churchill

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.
Winston Churchill

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
Winston Churchill

There is no such thing as a good tax.
Winston Churchill

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
Winston Churchill

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
Winston Churchill

There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table.
Winston Churchill

These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived.
Winston Churchill

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
Winston Churchill

They told me that Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.
Winston Churchill

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.
Winston Churchill

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
Winston Churchill

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
Winston Churchill

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
Winston Churchill

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
Winston Churchill

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
Winston Churchill

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston Churchill

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Winston Churchill

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
Winston Churchill

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
Winston Churchill

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
Winston Churchill

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.
Winston Churchill

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.
Winston Churchill

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

We must beware of needless innovations, especially when guided by logic.
Winston Churchill

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
Winston Churchill

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
Winston Churchill

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
Winston Churchill

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
Winston Churchill

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.
Winston Churchill

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.
Winston Churchill

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
Winston Churchill

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
Winston Churchill

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
Winston Churchill

When you took your seat I felt as if a woman had come into my bathroom and I had only the sponge to defend myself.
Winston Churchill

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
Winston Churchill

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
Winston Churchill

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
Winston Churchill

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Winston Churchill

Happy Churchill Quoting !!

Something To Be Proud of in this Vacuous World !!

Monument Man' Who Saved Artwork from Nazi Looters Honored

By Hannah Guillaume - The art was stolen, or about to be, but U.S. soldiers got there first, swiping and saving 10 million works of art from Nazis during World War II.

Known as "Monument Men," they stopped the greatest theft in history.

On Capitol Hill Wednesday, one of 13 known surviving Monument Men joined Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, as she introduced a resolution to honor them.

"To give is more rewarding than to take," said Harry Ettlinger, 80, of Rockaway, N.J., who was drafted into the Army and worked for the War Department's fine art and archive section.

Ettlinger, 80, whose Jewish family fled Germany in 1938, worked to locate and store art, from paintings to church bells. He worked on more than 900 cases during World War II.

Granger said she is glad to have gotten the resolution going, "which I think is overdue, but not too late."

In 1939, European museum directors and local volunteers emptied the Louvre Museum in Paris and other museums, hiding their treasures in castles and other buildings in small towns before invading Germans could loot them. Near the end of the war, Ettlinger and others went into Germany to find artworks that had been stolen.

The sergeant kept safe artworks including Rembrandt's 1650 "Self Portrait" while it was stored in the Heilbronn salt mine in Southern Germany.

The Heilbronn mine took 10 months to empty. Ettlinger accompanied the final shipment of artworks on a train to Paris.

"Everything which was underground was in good condition," Ettlinger said.

He worked with the 400 other Monument Men - and women - from 15 different countries. Other soldiers gave the unit its nickname because of the work it did.

Museum directors were also involved, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Mo., the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Ettlinger and other Monument Men were able to stop the Allied nighttime bombings in the center of Cologne, Germany, to preserve the city's Gothic cathedrals, including the Rhine Cathedral.

Their work also took place in the U.S. during the war. One week after Pearl Harbor, 71 paintings were moved from the National Gallery of Art to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., for protection in case the U.S. capital was bombed.

"The officers issued a manifesto that said, 'To the victors do not go the spoils of war,'" he said. "We are here to make it a better world."

After the war, artwork stored by museums in the U.S. was returned to countries of ownership, including Holland, Belgium and France.

Robert Edsel, author of "Rescuing Da Vinci," a book of pictures that shows the work of the Monument Men, said Congress and the museum directors should recognize he Monument Men's preservation efforts.

"They have at their roots the work of these men and women," Edsel said. "He's [Ettlinger] the hero that changed the course of civilization."

Art Hostage

Art Hostage, Tate unites Turners to save masterpiece, Where is the $20 million from the Turner thefts?

Where is the $20 million from the Turner thefts, Squandered on Demonic Serota's Modern Art Choices !!

Tate unites Turners to save masterpiece

Dayla Alberge, Arts Correspondent

Gallery to raise £4.95m for purchase
Temporary bar placed on export



Arts

The Times December 07, 2006



The Blue Rigi, for which the Tate must raise £4.95 million



The Tate is to bring together for the first time three of Turner’s greatest watercolour paintings as part of a campaign to raise nearly £5 million to prevent one of them, The Blue Rigi, from going abroad.

The Blue Rigi, The Dark Rigi and The Red Rigi — shimmering depictions of Mount Rigi, as seen from Lake Lucerne — are widely regarded as Turner’s finest works, if not the finest watercolours of all.

Each of the three paintings depicts the mountain at a different time of day and is characterised by a defining colour or tone.

The Red Rigi has been in the National Gallery of Melbourne since 1947, but the other two have, until this year, been in private hands.

David Lammy, the Culture Minister, has placed a temporary export bar on The Blue Rigi. The Tate must raise £4.95 million by March 20 to save it for the nation. If successful, it would be the most expensive single work of art it has bought.

Mr Lammy’s ruling followed a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, which described the painting as “of outstanding aesthetic importance”. The committee gave it a starred rating, meaning that “every possible effort should be made to raise enough money to keep it in the country”.

Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain, said: “The acquisition of The Blue Rigi would have a significant impact on our ability to reveal the full brilliance of his mature work. This is a chance we dare not miss.”

The exhibition, at Tate Britain in London, will run from January 22 to March 25. It will unite the extraordinary, finished watercolours — late works dating from 1842 — with the gallery’s own collection of Turner’s preparatory material for the Rigi series.

The Dark Rigi was sold this year by Simon Dickinson, the London dealer, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for £2.7 million, subject to an export licence being granted. Then the dealer “sold it to the first UK buyer to match the price . . . who always planned to lend it to a UK institution”.

The Blue Rigi was sold this year, at Christie’s, where it made £5.83 million, having had a £2 million estimate. The buyer is thought to be American.

Art Hostage comments:

The Blue Rigi was purchased by Steve "Mr Magoo" Wynn at auction this year.

My question is, where is the $20 million from the Turner thefts that the Tate extorted from AXA and Hiscox?

This money, as with the terms of the Turner bequest should be used to purchase the said Turner watercolor.

As with all elitist institutions like the Tate, they have spent the Turner theft money on modern art, and now have the balls to ask the public for the money to keep the Blue Rigi in Britain.

Dalya, bless her, seems to omitt the money left over from the Turner theft, although I think it is her editor that has sanitised her reporting.

The honourable thing for the Tate to do is to sell the modern artworks purchased by Demonic Serota, then use that money to buy the Blue Rigi.

Is this too much to ask from the Criminal gangsters at the Tate, who hide their blatent criminality behind the cloak of respectability?