>From: Mark Rosenzweig <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Bagdhad Library projects, ALA, and Cultural Imperialism
>Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 19:26:37 -0400
>
>What are the principles involved in the Iraq library issue?
>
>First and foremost, we should be supporting an end to military occupation;
>opposing the imposition of an American-selected interim government; for the
>recusal of American government-connected agencies (e.g. USAID) and firms
>from re-development in the area of culture; the end to all intimations that
>the US (e.g LoC or the Met Museum) or Britain (e.g. Bitish Museum) has any
>claims on Iraq's antiquities, art, manuscripts, or books; the call for an
>international panel to deal with the issue of the library and its contents,
>our only responsibility now being the protection of it while we withdraw
>and perhaps the assistance in creation of team of locals who can continue
>to protect it in the short interim; we should expose all attempts at
>'market solutions' to the art & manuscripts issues, which are based on the
>presumption that they are all dispersed and cannot be re-collected and that
>the US has rthe right to allow them to enter the international art market
>(which is presently illegal) something which is being vigorously being
>lobbied for at the White House by the art sales houses, museums, collectors
>and dealers who want to snarf up Iraq's treasures (i.e. by the real
>looters)
>
>Nothing would be more detestable than to seek to prioritize the building of
>a new national library by Western forces in destroyed Baghdad in the midst
>of tyhe destruction we have wrought while the basic problems of existence
>are unresolved and governance and administartion are still at issue. I beg
>you in SRRT & PLG to have nothing to do with such 'humanitarian' efforts to
>memorialize the war and occupation with a glamorous library.
>
>Mark Rosenzweig
>ALA Councilor at large
>
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