Well, Peter, some of these people seem to have made it to Canada too,
as the CBC showed footage of such a little troupe not exactly dancing
but moving through a store in such a way as to distract & then
stealing. Of course, they were identified as 'Romanian gypsies'...
But as to your second point, it seemed to me that Ali thought very
carefully about how & why the alarm raiser thought as he did, & it all
had to do with the strange culture of fear the Bush admin has
constructed for USAmericans, so that they are invited to see anyone
'other' as immediately dangerous, even on a university campus (& of
course, after this week, such campi will seem eve more dangerous).
Sorry, my empathy is with Ali....
Doug
On 20-Apr-07, at 10:36 AM, Peter Cudmore wrote:
> I saw this in the Guardian yesterday and thought about posting the
> link, but
> didn't want to be propagating anti-Romanian sentiment:
> < http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/news/story/0,,2061221,00.html >
>
> Apparently, some people got scammed by a troupe of 'Spanish' dancers:
> while
> their attention was fixed on the dancing, someone went rummaging and
> pilfering...
>
> Reading Geoffrey's forwarded story, it occurred to me that Kazim Ali is
> complaining about the alarm-raiser jumping to conclusions on the basis
> of
> limited information that he should have been able to read better, but
> in
> making this claim he seems to be doing just the same thing. He seems
> no more
> able to imagine from the other's point of view than the other is
> faulted for
> being unable to do with respect to the original incident.
>
> Both stories can be read either as 'scandalously insensitive' or 'very
> funny'. I wonder if that's *because* they are arts-related, or is it
> the
> ambiguity that *makes* them arty?
>
> P
>
>
Douglas Barbour
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(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
What dull barbarians are not proud of
their dullness and barbarism?
Thackeray
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