Versions of the following have appeared online regularly, since 1992, as a feature of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, which is distributed for free via email every month except August. Ejournal subscriptions may be obtained via email request to: kessler@well.sf.ca.us

Here this file is one of a number made available -- hopefully attractively, all in one place, and relevant to libraries and online digital information work in France and Europe -- as part of FYI France (sm)(tm), an online service to which anyone can subscribe for 12 months by postal mailing a check for US $45, payable to Jack Kessler, to PO Box 460668, San Francisco, California, USA 94146 (site licenses also are available): please write your email address on the front of your check. Please email suggestions for improvements to me at kessler@well.sf.ca.us
 

Anyone among FYI France readers who might want to sign the following letter is invited to do so. It will be sent this week to President and Mrs. George Bush, to urge that cultural sites located in Iraq be respected and protected, and included in any "war" and "nation - building" planning currently under way in the White House.

Mrs. Bush is a trained librarian. The idea arose, in the Exlibris econference online, that -- because Sennacherib's Palace in Nineveh contains the world's oldest library -- an appeal to her and to her husband to pay attention to cultural sites might get through. One can only hope...

If you wish to sign, please send an email message to me at,

showing your full name and institutional affiliation -- simply for identification and "impression" purposes, as the letter clearly states that we are acting in our personal capacities only. Non - US signers would be very welcome on this particular White House letter, I think.

Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us

President and Mrs. George Bush
The White House

 

Mr. President, and Mrs. Bush:

We are members of the rare books and libraries community,
located in several nations around the world, writing
to you in our personal capacities.

War risks to art objects and architecture in Iraq concern us
greatly. The world's oldest known library was located in
the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh, now an archeological
site in northern Iraq, and the fame and cultural significance
of Iraq sites such as Babylon and Ctesiphon, and Baghdad itself
and "Ur of the Chaldees", are generally known.

There is much precedent, in wartime, for the taking of
extraordinary measures to preserve sites of artistic and
cultural significance. Famous memoirs of such efforts include:

 

• Hartt, Frederick. Florentine art under fire
  (Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1949)

• Nicholas, Lynn H. The rape of Europa : the fate of
  Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second
  World War (New York : Knopf, 1994)

 

We also would like to suggest to you that any process of "nation
- building", which is to take place in Iraq, might benefit
greatly from the tourism which could result from better opening
that country's famous history to outside visitors -- and might be
greatly damaged by their destruction, as it was in Afghanistan.

The greatest irony of history might be that Western Civilization
would find its end in the Fertile Crescent region which gave it
birth. We encourage you to do your utmost, on behalf of the
American people and also on behalf of the people of the rest of
the world, to take measures to protect from bombing or other
damage whatever cultural sites we can preserve in Iraq.

Signed,

FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal                   ISSN 1071 - 5916

      *
      |           FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
      |           journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
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        	Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler, 
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