Re: Hugh Jarvis-anthropologist! (fwd)

Danny Yee (danny@STAFF.CS.SU.OZ.AU)
Sat, 11 Mar 1995 13:18:28 +1000

email from me.

Robert Johnson writes:
> That's why I keep telling you and Danny Yee to check with
> your lawyers. Maybe they can explain how inaction to stop a
> crime can be a statute offense, while also explaining that your
> continuing threats in private E-Mail to throw me off the list
> can at this point be deemed harassment, and also that if you do
> throw me off the list you'd better be dead certain about what you
> say, do, and accuse me of.

Dear Robert Johnson,

Once again you have demonstrated your parochial, blindly US-centric
view of the world. As I've pointed out before, Australian law is not
the same as US law, and you are talking through your hat. It's odd,
isn't it, how the US executive is supporting murder, but the US legal
system is so wonderful? But I still can't get over the earlier appeal
to "the blood spilt from Yorktown to Gettysberg to Little Bighorn";
whether you are actually a CIA agent provocateur or not is hard to
tell, but it's very clear that you are a US nationalist at heart,
and that this runs deeper than your commitment to anything else.

Why aren't *you* in Chiapas wielding a gun, anyway? Why are you
sitting in Colorado appropriating the voices of native Americans
instead? It's all very well jumping up and down and accusing
anthroplogists of complicity in genocide, but how about some
constructive advice? What, exactly, *should* we be doing? (I didn't
have plans for fieldwork in Chiapas anyway, you see.) I do donate
money to an aid agency which carries out projects in the Americas,
and I fear some of the aid workers are anthropologists by training;
should I discontinue this practice, lest I be complicit in Community
Aid Abroad's attempt to commit genocide by installing water pumps
and training teachers?

Danny Yee.

P.S. anthro-l is Hugh's list. You can take it to your all-mighty US
law if you wish, but he (or the appropriate person at his university)
is perfectly entitled to kick anyone he likes off it, or to shut
the whole thing down, for that matter. If he chooses to warn you
that he is considering evicting you then that's just politeness.
Go start your own list, then you will have the same power. Oh,
that's right, you already have -- didn't you get enough subscribers
to make a soapbox necessary?