> This boycott gives me the creeps. I'd boot a Sharon
> enthusiast off an editorial board, but not Israelis in
> general. Should I boycott my Israeli shrink, or does she
> get an exemption because she works on the Upper West
> Side? Was there anything comparable in the South African
> sanctions (or sanctions movement)?
(sorry, sent that last message off w/o completing my original point)
My only firsthand knowledge of this sort of boycott w.r.t to SA goes back to the 1987 meeting of the IUCr[1] in Perth, Western Australia that I attended as a graduate student. At this meeting a motion was made to support the anti-apartheid boycott by forbidding the IUCr from sending any books or journals published by the IUCr into SA. The motion was defeated, as I thought it should be.
I thought (and still think) this was the correct position in spite of the fact that, as a private actor, I refused to send certain software to a SA scientist I met there because I regarded him as a flaming fucking racist.
[1] IUCr: International Union of Crystallography, and umbrella group of a bunch of national societies of scientists engaged in bouncing x-rays off of matter for fun and profit. Actually, a fairly liberal bunch as physical scientists go. A couple of the Nobel winners in our field were also famous leftists: Bernal, Hodgkin, Pauling...
-- no Onan
Undefeated, everybody goes home