The Invisible Library

A new series of posts about human rights archives

After a week of patriotic frenzies for former President Ronald Reagan, I thought I would announce an upcoming series on archives with an interest in human rights. Our nation is only as great as the leaders, citizens, and friends who call the U.S. home, or an ally–and we are an amazing group. Yet, we as a nation are not without room for improvement. We lag behind Europe on some issues, the death penalty especially, equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, true spiritual liberty (whatever that is), and other issues certainly, like holding heads of state in custody for undetermined lengths of time.

While in some people’s minds the task of telling these stories might be better left to journalists, poets, historians, and novelists–maybe even politicians and governments. But these other professions need the assistance of professional archivists to get the story as “right” as possible. Archivists need to do the work of documenting the cultural life of these united states so the task of living up to our lofty goals is attainable, at least in good faith. Archivists can also certainly tell the stories themselves, but as archivists our job is to assist others by providing ready access to materials of enduring and continuing value.

This blog series will feature the National Security Archive, the Human Rights Watch Archive, academic institutions such as the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge, which has received the collected papers of the Chicano comedic theater troupe Culture Clash (some of which will be included in the library’s Latino Cultural Heritage Digital Archives, according to printed news sources from the Reed Elsevier company),as well as the U.S. National Archives and the archives of other countries.

For now though, today is set aside as a day to celebrate the birthday of the stars and stripes. Happy flag day one and all!

Click for a history of the U.S. Flag.

The Guardian:

Saddam Hussein must either be released from custody by June 30 or charged if the US and the new Iraqi government are to conform to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last night.

Surely there must be some crime to charge Hussein with but why hasn’t the US Government done so?

According to the New York Times, last year White House lawyers concluded that President Bush could legally order interrogators to torture and even kill people in the interest of national security � so if that’s legal, what the hell are we charging Saddam Hussein with? �Jay Leno

There has been some speculation that the reason Hussein hasn’t been charged is that if he goes to trial, he will remind everyone that it was the recently deceased saint of the Neocons, Ronald Reagan and his then-flunkies, Rumsfeld and Chenney who sold him the chemical weapons that he used against the Kurds in the 1980’s (these same chemical weapons were flaunted a year ago as just te tip of the evil iceberg in regards to Saddam’s WMDs, if you remember). This is a speculation, of course. But it adds to the growing controversy over the rights of Combatants/POWs and the increasingly flimsy excuses given for holding them. It would be a travesty if Hussein were released on a technicality on July 1st, just because everyone in the DOJ was too busy writing torture memos and just plum forgot to put together a case against him.

Of course, another angle on this is that the US hasn’t charged Hussein with anything because he hasn’t broken any US laws. Despite all Bush’s attempts to link the two in the mind sof the American People, Hussein had nothing to do with the WTC attacks or any other terrorist acts against the US. So he may not be subject to American law and since Bush has made it plain that he thinks international law is OK for the French but need not apply to the US, there may be nothing we can do with Hussein except:

1. Let him go
2. Turn him over to a third party who could then arrest him under international law
3. Turn him over to the Iraqi Government (which is full of Baathists who might either let him go or put him back in power)

Scenario 1 is simply unexceptable. too many people have died trying to put that man behind bars to simply let him walk away on July 1st. Scenario 2 would rob Bush of his one paper thin sliver of glory, and the last remaining pretext for invading Iraq. Scenario 3 would be even worse than scenario 1. So unless the US finds a convenient legal loophole by the end of the month and can charge Hussein with something, anything, maybe even failure to pay parking tickets, George Bush might just loose his only chance at Reelection American Justice.