> I hereby tender my regrets for turning Geoff's message into a political monologue.
> Histarch should, as many of you have pointed out, remain apolitical. >;much snipping>



I'd like to gently introduce a slight note of nuance as regards Jeffrey's apology (with apologies in turn to Jeffrey for revisiting an issue he presumably wanted to leave behind following that apology).
 
The original offence here seems to have been making general negative comments about individual American presidential candidates, without reference to archaeology.  But I'm not sure this means that Histarch should be 'apolitical'.
 
Anita has the final say on this, of course, but it would surely be appropriate, for example, for us to discuss Obama and McCain so long as discussion focussed on how their political platforms specifically impacted heritage policy, or to discuss the heritage policy of the Harper government in light of the recent Quebec City celebrations, or the British Ministry of Defence's deal with Odyssey Marine over the protests of most major British professional archaeology bodies, or whether the Victorian state government gives enough attention to historical heritage outside of Melbourne.  All of these issues are archaeological, and all are inherently political.

 

Perhaps the issue isn't really politics per se, but political relevance.  It would be a shame if we could never discuss political issues here, so long as those political issues were relevant to historical archaeology.
 
Alasdair Brooks