September 2001

Mark Rosenzweig has written an emergency
declaration for librarians to sign expressing their
opposition to preparations for war on Afghanistan. So far
it has around 160 signatures (it is Wednesday night). The
above link leads to a web page where you can add your
signature. The declaration is copied here:

Mark Rosenzweig has written an emergency
declaration for librarians to sign expressing their
opposition to preparations for war on Afghanistan. So far
it has around 160 signatures (it is Wednesday night). The
above link leads to a web page where you can add your
signature. The declaration is copied here:EMERGENCY DECLARATION FOR A HALT TO PREPARATIONS FOR
BOMBING AFGHANISTAN:
LIBRARIANS SPEAK OUT!

We undersigned librarians from all over the world implore
the United States
government and its allies to halt the preparations for
all-out war against
the nation of Afghanistan in retaliation for the alleged
actions of the Bin
Laden ring against US targets. We must remind the world
that the United States
originally funded the Afghani Islamic fundamentalist
movement, including Bin
Laden, to oppose the Soviet occupation.

Out of a simple humanitarianism we ask that the technology
and forces of
mass destruction ready to be deployed against the Afghani
people be demobilized
and that the Afghani people be spared the horrors of yet
another war.

They have suffered inordinately over these last decades,
torn by civil war,
by invasion, by an extended conflict with a militarily
superior super-power
by the manipulations of its factions by Cold War political
tacticians and
operatives. It has been bombed repeatedly, intensively,
furiously. It has
been ripped apart by armed conflict and left to the misery
of rule by a
theocratic police state which has imposed an aberrant,
pathological form of
Islamic fundamentalism on its hapless people.

It is the people of Afghanistan who will pay for the
crimes of terrorists
over whom they have no control. It is the poorest, most
vulnerable — the
children, elderly women — who will suffer for having
endured the inhumanity
of the Taliban.

We librarians call for the lawful and most humane and
peaceful resolution of
conflicts. The war that is about to be unleashed will
likely have unmanageable
\”collateral damage\”, human and moral. It will be an
abomination that will
breed further abominations, for it is a war against a
people, against
civilians, in violation of international law, a war with
no end but
vengeance, and a vengeance which seems potentially
insatiable.

NO TO WAR AGAINST THE AFGHANI PEOPLE!
NO TO THE INDETERMINATE THREATS AGAINST SO-CALLED
\”HARBORERS\” OF
TERRORISTS!

CULTURAL WORKERS, TEACHERS, LIBRARIANS, ARTISTS, UNITE
AGAINST
VENGEANCE FOR VENGEANCE SAKE, UNITE AGAINST TERROR BOMBING
AS AN ANSWER TO
TERRORISM.

WE CALL FOR THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM AGAINST THE UNITED
STATES TO BE
ADDRESSED WITHIN A LAWFUL FRAMEWORK INSTEAD OF THE
PERPETUATION OF
BARBARISM!