MacLeod, Heather schrieb:
> As a group concerned with material culture - what are the thoughts of the
> HISTARCH audience members on the state of affairs in Afghanistan regarding
> the Taliban's destruction of the Buddha statues?  Here's a web address for
> today's news (Thursday March 1st)
> http://www.infoculture.cbc.ca/archives/misc/misc_03012001_buddhas.phtml
> that discusses the issue.
> Are there any comments or opinions on what may be the responsibilities of
> the international cultural heritage community?
> Just curious and thought this may be a good place to hear some debate about
> it from an informed audience.

they're discussing it here in germany, too - someone compared it to the nazis
burning books - i sometimes think that and desecrating cemeteries is some kind
of mark of weakness: destroying something you don't understand yet can't fight
back -
        reminds me a bit of 1984 - and with the book burning idea comes back
heinrich heine's quote about once they start burning books they'll eventually
get around to burning people -
        but with the taliban i sometimes wonder if they are deliberately going
out of their way to make enemies? they can't seem to do anything right PR-wise:
women, minority groups within afghanistan, drug trade, bin laden, now this -
        they can't join the world of respected nations if they break every
recognised human right, international treaty, etc.; don't they know enough about
history to realise that autarchy doesn't work? albania, north korea, etc. - even
iran seems to be shifting away from the excesses of the revolution -
        back to a question i posted last year somewhere else: could nazi germany
be considered to have been a "culture" in the anthropological sense? could the
taliban? i think they both bear the seeds of their own destruction: nazi germany
could not have expanded indefinitely, and i don't see any signs of life or
development or whatever in taliban which would suggest any sense of permanency
(i hope) -


geoff carver
http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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