yo! whaddup? :)
(in your email program, you can set it so that the text your replying to, in this case mine, is set off by a special character, like so
>You just don't go knocking on the Taliban's
>door and say, "We've come to arrest ObL Inc.
instead of this, below, with quotes.
>Kelly wrote:
>
>"You just don't go knocking on the Taliban's door and say, "We've
>come to arrest ObL Inc. Here are our papers." Lots of luck. did you even
this makes it difficult to read the exchange and it's easy to confuse who said what. yes, i know, you're using quotation marks and that's supposed to do the trick. it doesn't. (see carrol's recent complaint to max sawicky (mbs)
i'm going to insert carrots into my text, 'k?
> >consider the anthropological interpretation of what the
> >Taliban think they are doing when they protect ObL? Inc.?
> >Different normative code, for these guys."
>
>Well, no one went knocking on their door with the papers - so this is
>speculation. In fact, the west explicitly said they were not going to go
>knock on their door with the papers, they said: "there will be no
>negotiations."
did you read the anthropological interpretation i sent here, entitled "honor"?
regardless, my point is that even if one could politely ask, with some nice polite international police officers, it's unlikely that ObL and the major players were going to give up peacefully. if you committed such an act, would you? if you consider yourself to be waging a war on the US, would you?
> >How does that conform to idealised western self-perceived
> >"normative codes" ? - not very well, although it
> >unfortunately conforms nearly perfectly with past practice
> >in such matters.
actually, it conforms very well to rootin' tootin' cowboy US normative codes. You remember Reagan? We do NOT negotiate! rah rah! HUZZAH! was the refrain.
>How about the "normative code" of the Taliban? What evidence do we have
>that they were unwilling to hand over bin Laden, given the proper
>"papers."?
well, you just joined i take it, or haven't read me, but that was my beef for quite a while. i absolutely refused and i encouraged others to resist going along with the program of blaming it on bin Laden. I smelled a rat, and a wee part of me still does. i did so as part of my effort at resisting the propaganda churned out by the administration. so, i kept saying, 'we should demand publicly available evidence. things aren't adding up. it's only right that the US public knows the whole story and that Pakistan,the Taliban, China, and all the other nations involved here should see this so-called evidence."
>They are fundamentalist - but they are not so crazy as risk
>vaporization over some guy, even a symbolically important guy.
apparently they are, no? they could have given the guy up at some point right? they could have invited the US in and said, hey, go ahead, go get him and we'll help you.
why not? they certainly ARE risking vaporization.
i'm not saying that justified our recent action. i saw no reason for our refusal to budge. but, equally, there is no reason for their refusal to budge, is there?
>At a minimum, the west should have publically handed over the evidence,
>if such exists, and called the Taliban's "bluff." That is the
>"arrogance" perceived in the middle east: that America need not justify
>itself in pursuing such actions.
>
>And how about your own "normative code", Kelly - how have you come to
>think bin Laden is the key figure here.
i don't. that's why i wrote, ObL Inc.
>How will getting him make any
>difference at all? As far as I know, there is not much evidence that he
>really did push all the buttons behind this; certainly he is a
>figurehead.
where have you been?! I've been arguing this for a month now!
>But killing figureheads is the last thing the US needs to do
>to ensure its own safety. Pursuing this war on the grounds stated is at
>least incompetent.
no duh. i'm not arguing for war and haven't been. i've been arguing against the facile arguments pursued by those who support an international law solution to this issue. i think it was a viable option to push for and i did my best and will continue to do so.
>TC Oppermann
>Dept. Anthropology
>The University of Sydney
>
>PS: "normative codes' is a terribly unfortunate choice of words, as it
>is actually the language of imperialism: typically, indirect rule gurus
>like Lord Luggard would rabbit on about respecting "normative codes" and
>tolerating all manner of despotism through which, of course, their own
>power was being exercised. Cultural relativism was for a long time
>imperial doctrine. Let's not revive it as such.
red herring. thanks, but you can have it back. i'm a sociologist. normative codes wasn't deployed in the way you think it was apparently. i was referring to an article i forwarded here, published in an autralian paper, under the subject line "honor" or perhaps i spelled it "honour" respecting the normative conventions of the rest of the english speaking world.
don't worry, i'm not a flippin' cultural relativist either. and, on that note, you can talk your uncalled for misinterpretations of what i wrote and put it in your pipe and smoke it.