Views in brief
Support Al-Jazeera English
AT A meeting of over 100 people last week, the residents of Burlington overwhelmingly voiced their opinion to keep Al-Jazeera English on the municipally owned cable company Burlington Telecom.
Of those who spoke, it was 3-to-1 in favor of keeping the channel. Another meeting is planned for June 11.
The meeting was called by progressive Mayor Bob Kiss in response to residents' complaints that Al-Jazeera had been taken off the air. Burlington Telecom had originally decided to take the news network off the air after they received "dozens" of letters calling for it to be removed.
A small group calling itself the "Defenders' Council of Vermont" has claimed responsibility for this. This group's stated goal is to "educate the public about the threats associated with radical Islam." In other words, when a network like Al-Jazeera shows the suffering of Arab people at the hands of U.S. imperialism, they want it shut down.
As University of Vermont sociologist Tom Streeter said in the meeting, "The calamity of the war in Iraq is a terrible example of what happens when one shuts out alternative points of view."
But this is not just a free-speech issue--it's about standing up to anti-Arab racism. Al-Jazeera is a respected news agency throughout the world, and Burlington Telecom shut them down after a few letters were written. If it was the laughably right-wing Fox News that the complaints were written about, there's no way they would be taking them off the air after "dozens of letters."
Everyone interested in fighting back against this tide of anti-Arab racism should come to the next public forum on Wednesday, June 11 at 6:30 pm in the Hauke conference room at Champlain College.
Steve Ramey, Burlington, Vt.
Revolutionary responsibilities
JOE ALLEN ("From quagmire to defeat") doesn't seem to understand that the main obligation of a revolutionary organization during the Vietnam War was to build mass demonstrations. Period.
The frustration that some youthful radicals felt over such demonstrations resulted in those adventurist tactics that really was not a threat to the war-makers. In fact, they would have preferred small-scale "bold" actions.
I am sorry to see this lingering adaptation to ultra-leftism in the International Socialist Organization, which I first noticed in the way it flattered the Black Bloc confrontations from the Seattle days of the global justice movement. You really need to move past this kind of infantile ultra-leftism.
Louis Proyect, from the Internet
Give Iron Man its due
IN LIGHT of the criticism Leia Petty received ("Don't waste your time on Iron Man") for her review of Iron Man ("Iron Man seeks redemption"), I thought it important to give her method, and SW, my continued vote of confidence.
I think her review was aesthetically correct, politically right on and the kind I'd like to see in SW. Those who wrote in criticism of Petty exhibit a semi-Proletkult attitude I've found common on the radical left. Perhaps this attitude is a defense to living in a society soaked with sexism and racism to sell its wares.
I appreciate how Petty locates the film in its political context, highlights its artistic merits and comments on its shortcomings. She proves we don't have to "turn our brain off" to enjoy popular entertainment, but that it's possible to enjoy art done well, even if it's got all kinds of political shortcomings.
Her approach gives the art its due, while criticizing and explaining the context of the faults. That's all I want from a review, from SW or anywhere else. Keep up the good work.
Frank C., Astoria, N.Y.
Archaeology has come a long way
ALTHOUGH HAVING not seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and therefore not being able to comment on its credentials whatsoever, I would at least like to contest some of the commentary Joe Allen brings to the profession of archaeology ("The trouble with Indy").
As an anthropology student and someone who has quite a few archaeologist friends, I would like to point out that despite archaeology's and anthropology's racist and imperialist past, times for both of these professions have drastically changed.
Joe goes on about archaeology as if American and British archaeologists are still going into South American countries and pilfering the indigenous people's artifacts! My basic point is that, although this may have been true at one point, it is no longer the case. The looting of archaeological goods is now conducted primarily by smugglers, by the U.S. Army (looting of the Baghdad museum), and with collections that are sold to collectors.
Museums still play a crucial part in this endeavor, however. Basically, once a collector amasses enough stolen artifacts, they prefer to show them off in museums...which actually gives them legitimacy and a "blank slate" if you will. So the issue is quite a bit more complex than Joe seems blanket it with.
Joe writes, "Archeologists were notorious during the conquest of North America and the European colonization of large parts of the globe during the 19th and early 20th centuries for plundering indigenous peoples of important symbols of their civilizations and stuffing them into the museums of their capital cities."
That may have been the case at one point, but that point is not today, and I think that needs to be recognized.
Paul Lynch, Providence, R.I.
