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Everything which being tried here in Ithaca, New York is similar of what is also happening in Baghdad, Iraq. Moreover,
the critical juncture of Cultural Communication occurs in the producing of social and cultural events.
What this website, along with the cultural democracy formula associated with it, allows the average community online users
to have imput on its content. This has been discovered from similar approaches from Tokyo,
Japan, all the way to Los Angeles, California, as well as from New York City to Paris, France. Some 39 Night Life (
NightLife ), RMC cities, along with 64 supporting blogs.
The inclusions of blogs are highly imprtant. For they are developed by those who really do not want to develop a
whole website to get others to know of who they are, or what their interest is.
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Congressional Library Special Report
Preservation efforts:
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The members of the Library of Congress team who visited Baghdad in October-November 2003 to advise the Ministry
of Culture on the National Library of Baghdad, wish to thank all those who made the mission possible. Their special thanks
go to the Minister of Culture Mufid al-Jazaeri for his support of the mission, to Ambassador Mario Bondioli-Osio who guided
and advised them and listened to their reports every day the mission was in Baghdad, to Professor John Russell who was among
the very first people to visit the National library after the war, and whose opinions the members of the LC team valued highly,
and to Kristen Jenkinson-McDermott without whose help and planning the team would not have been able to accomplish their work.
The team is also extremely grateful to Wishyar Mohamed, the CPA advisor on libraries, who was always sharing his views with
the team and enabling each party to better understand the concerns of the others. Dr. Faiza Adeed was inspiring as a woman
with a vision for her country and for a great library for the future of Iraq, and we are grateful for her help and that of
Acting Director General Kamil Jawad who explained to us at length the problems of his library. The LC team wishes to express
its gratitude to all the staff of the National Library and to that of the House of Manuscripts as well. The team was very
impressed by the dedication of the librarians and the staff members of those institutions and of the way they defended and
protected their books and manuscripts, and in so doing protected the cultural heritage of Iraq. Dr. Dhamia `Abbas Samarai
the director of the House of Manuscripts and her husband the former director Usama al-Naqshabandi must be praised for the
important work they did there over many years. Thanks must also go to Wathiq (Tony) Hindu for his efforts at rescuing the
flooded documents, and his assistance to the members of the team throughout their stay in Baghdad. The team also wishes to
express their thanks to Maria Kouroupas and Bonnie Gardiner of the Cultural Property Office of the Department of State who
believed in the Library of Congress' mission to assist the National Library in Baghdad, and provided the moral and financial
support for the team to do so. They are also grateful to the Coalition Provisional Authority Representative Office in Washington
who took care of their trip to and from Baghdad. Thanks go also to Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, Jo Ann
Jenkins, the Chief of Staff, Deanna Marcum, Carolyn Brown, Nancy Davenport, Beverly Gray, Marc Roosa, Diane Van Der Reyden,
who supported and encouraged the team every step of the way.
A team of three specialists from the Library of Congress led by Mary-Jane Deeb, Ph.D., Arab World Area Specialist,
and including Michael Albin, Chief Anglo-American Acquisitions, and Alan Haley, Senior Conservation Specialist, left for Baghdad
on Saturday, October 25th . They arrived in Kuwait first, and spent the night of Sunday, October 26th at the Federal Deployment
Center of the CPA located at the Hilton Resort in Mangaf.
On Monday October 27, they flew to Baghdad where they were met by Kristen Jenkinson-McDermott, Program Analyst at the Educational
and Cultural Affairs Office of the US Department of State and the CPA Coordinator for the Cultural Property program in Iraq.
They met with Professor John Russell, who is the CPA Senior Advisor on libraries and museums, and Ambassador Mario Bandioli-Osio
who is the CPA administrator for libraries and museums.
On Tuesday, October 28, the members of the LC team were given a tour of the "Palace", met with military personnel involved
with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, and were briefed on their mission by Kristen Jenkinson-McDermott, John Russell and Ambassador
Bandioli-Osio. That evening they met with Wathiq (Tony) Hindu, an Iraqi contractor for the CPA and the person who had arranged
for lodging, car and security for the LC team. Each day after the team members visited sites they returned to the Palace to
brief Ambassador Bandiolo-Osio and sometimes members of the military as well as to their activities that day.
 The next morning, Wednesday, October 29, the members of the LC team visited the site of the National Library of Iraq, the
"Old Library", as the team called it to differentiate it from the site for the "new library" selected to replace the damaged
building. The team spent the first couple of hours visiting the ground floor and the two floors of above the entrance the
building that had been burnt by two fires on April 10 and 14, 2003.
The team also visited the stacks of the national
library. The stacks had been closed and the entrance, a large and heavy metal door, had been welded shut after the two fires
and lootings that occurred in April. The door was opened, on October 28, for the first time since the April fires, so that
the LC team members could visit and see for themselves what had happened to the collections. The team was thus the first non-Iraqi
group to view the collection first hand, and it was able to visit each of the five floors and see for itself what was in the
stacks. The team also took photographs of the collections.
 The team members then met with the staff. Deeb and Albin sat down with the librarians present and held discussions with them
in Arabic, identifying their names, their field of specialization and what academic degrees they held. They also talked with
the heads of departments and found out more about what had happened to the national library, and what the librarians thought
of having a new library in the former "Officers' Club" located a few blocks away. They met with Acting Library Director General
Kamil Jawad and Library Director General designee Faiza Adeeb and got their views on the current plight of the library and
their aspirations for the future. Professor Nazir Qasim joined the library discussion. He used to be director general of the
National Library in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and taught library science to many of the current staff members of the
Library, including to the Director General designee Faiza Adeeb. The LC team also met with Wishyar Mohamed an Iraqi expatriate
and library specialist, who is the CPA Advisor for the reconstruction of the national library, and who, throughout the visit,
coordinated the activities of the LC team with those of the Iraqi librarians.
Two religious clerics, Al-Sayyid 'Abd al-Mu'in al-Musawi and Al-Shaykh Muhammad Jawad al-Tamimi, then joined the group.
They were members of the Hawza or Shiite clergy who had taken part of the library and archive collection to their mosque for
safekeeping after the first fire and before the second (between April 10 and 14). The discussion with them proceeded while
their staff were bringing back some of the books and documents that they had stored in Sadr City in another part of Baghdad.
Two architects/engineers, Mazen Hasan Ridha, Director General of the Private Projects Directorate at the Ministry of Housing
and Construction, and his assistant Zafir 'Abd al-Jabbar also came to the meeting and expressed the view that the library
should not be moved to the Officers' Club, and that the damaged library was architecturally sound and could be repaired.
The following morning, Thursday October 30th , Kristen Jenkinson and John Russell escorted the LC
team to the site where the old manuscripts, once housed in "Dar Saddam lil-Makhtutat", had been hidden to protect them from looting. The primary location
was bomb shelter No. 12, in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad (although some of the manuscript cases and the microfilms of the
manuscripts are stored elsewhere). The team met there with the head of Dar al-Makhtutat or "House of Manuscripts" Dr. Dhamia
'Abbas Samarai, and her retired husband and former director of that institution, Usama al-Naqshabandi who has published several
books on the Iraqi manuscript collection. They showed the team metal cases in which 50,000 manuscripts were stored, and the
small laboratory where specialists in preservation and conservation were working to repair damaged manuscripts. The LC team
observed what was being done, looked at and photographed manuscripts and talked with the curators. They also met with neighbors
and others in the area who were looking after the manuscripts.
After lunch, the LC team went to visit the site where water-damaged archival documents and rare books had been stored.
These materials had been found at the Board of Tourism Building where they been brought at the beginning of the war for safekeeping.
Later that storage area had been flooded and Tony Hindu had been asked by the US military to get the flooded materials out
of the water, which he did. Those materials were then placed in a three room apartment in an inhabited building to dry. We
surveyed the apartment, photographed the rooms and some of the documents, and talked to the librarians who had been responsible
for moving these documents from the library to the board of tourism.
On Friday, October 31st , the team accompanied by Kristen Jenkinson, John Russell, Wishyar Mohamed, Faiza Adeeb and Kamal
 Jawad visited the Officers' Club, which had been selected by the CPA as a possible site for the new national library. The
team was given a thorough tour of the premises by a military engineer, Specialist Paul Drake, the Facility Maintenance Coordinator.
Drake not only had made a thorough inventory of all the building's infrastructural problems, he had also prepared a report
on what needed to be done, and had developed plans to build stacks if those were to be recommended for a new national library.
The LC team also visited the North Garage of the Officers' Club that had been repaired by Iraqi engineers hired by the
CPA, to assess the feasibility of using it as a temporary storage for the collections of the National Library. The team also
visited the officers' library located in an adjacent building to the club to decide whether these facilities could be used
for storage.
That evening the team stayed in the hotel. Ambassador Bondioli-Osio dropped by unexpectedly to let them know
about threats of attacks on US forces the next day, and a possible strike in Baghdad. He mentioned that some planned visits
might have to be curtailed or even canceled.
 On Saturday, November 1st , the team members decided not to take any risks, and instead of visiting the museum as had been
planned or the religious awqaf center in Sadr city, they returned to the Old Library with John Russell who had not visited
it with the team the first time around. They were all able thus to confirm what they had seen and what it meant and take more
photographs. They also observed the return of the materials taken by the Hawza at the time of the April fires which were boxed
in cardboard boxes and returned for storage to the Old Library.
Sunday, November 2nd , was the day when all the visits would come to fruition. In the morning the team was invited
to the "House of Fashion" the restored building which is planned to become the new Ministry of Culture. The members of the
LC had been asked to address the Library Board Representatives, and others including the engineers of the Housing and Construction
Board, as well as the new Minister of Culture Mufid al Jaza'iri, and Ambassador Bondioli-Osio. Each team member had prepared
a short speech: two in Arabic and one in English. The Ambassador spoke first, followed by the Minister, then the LC team (Wishyar
Mohamed acted as chair, moderator and translator on the panel), and Kamil Jawad the Acting Director General of the Library
also made a statement. Ambassador Bandioli-Osio concluded the session about the major recommendations of the panel, and then
invited the team to the office of the Minister of Culture. Deeb then briefed the Minister on the team's findings and recommendations.
That evening Ambassador Bandioli-Osio organized a big dinner at the "Hunting Club" in honor of the Library of Congress
team, at which he also invited members of CPA, the military and the Italian delegation.
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Baghdad at the Twilight of Evening, the eternal hope that each one will becoming more peaceful.
***
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Operation Proud to Serve ( Temporary )
103 West Seneca, Suite 206A
Ithaca, New York
14850
To be changed later to possibly Iraqi pride, as well as change
of address to one located in Baghdad and only concerned with this web site only.
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Lets hear from the people of Baghdad:
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Here is an opportunity for you to send information on the people of Baghdad. Its various lifestyles,
cultures, and much more. The reason why only this is being promoted is that America has over politicalized everything
its get involved with, and for the people of Baghdad, very few people here in America knows who you really are. So now
it is your opportunity for many others to get to know you as a peoples.
Iraqis have expressed concern over the American perceptions, lables, and definitions applied to civil war
and the up coming elections and its political campaign processes in the US. Iraqi anxiety mounts every day!
The leading item of which is " WHO " has defined civil war?
The Iraqis ?
The American Political Process ?
Or the American Media - Press ?
There exist a central Iraqi character which rejects violence around personal religious beliefs, and thus
the present state of concern and anxieties from informed Iraqis is understood.
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Index Page Links:
Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ~ Links
Semi - Sociocultural / Sociopolitical blogs:
Persian Gulf Veterans, and those service men and women who are now serving in this regions are encourage to join Persian Gulf Veterans here. Scroll down.
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Their Picture here:
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Who are the " Heros " of Baghdad of today ?
This is where you, the people of Baghdad, can post those in Iraq and Baghdad who are making
a difference for your peoples.
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Their Picture here:
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Who are the " Heros " of Baghdad of today ?
This is where you, the people of Baghdad, can post those in Iraq and Baghdad who are
making
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Their Picture here:
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Who are the " Heros " of Baghdad of today ?
This is where you, the people of Baghdad, can post those in Irag and Baghdad who are making
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Their Picture here:
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Who are the " Heros " of Baghdad of today ?
This is where you, the people of Baghdad, can post those in Iraq and Baghdad who are making
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Baghdad Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC [ Blogsite ]
***
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American Service Men
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American Service Men Serving in Iraq [ BlogSite ]
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American Service Women
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Add your content here
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British Service Men
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British Service Women
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Add your content here
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Private Contractors, and Volunteer Agencies involved.
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Add your content here
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Destination Cities :
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Alexandria Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC
The City of Miami and Miami Beach Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC
***
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Moscow Forums: Talent Transfer
I am slowly establishing a cultural democracy network in which Moscow Night Life (
NightLife ), RMC [ http://euro-quest.tripod.com/moscownightlife ]is but on in whole series of websites to produce an Inter
- City Cultural Communications website netwrok between selected International cities, and Ithaca, New York.
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Yahoo dot Com
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Add your content here
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MSN / AltaVista dot Com
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Add your content here
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The developing series of networks within the Middle East
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An Inter - City Cultural Communications website program between the citieas of Cairo, Eygpt, and Ithaca, New York
Based upon the principles of cultural democracy. [ Asian - Quest website ]
~ Alexandria Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ~ Baghdad Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ~ Beirut Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ~ Tel Aviv Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ~
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Baghdad Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC. Beirut Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC. Cairo Night Life
( NightLife ), RMC. Tel Aviv Night Life ( NightLife ), RMC ...
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| The Mohawk Building - Baghdad |
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Cultural - Scope:
Baghdad --- Cultural Communications --- Ithaca
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| Baghdad Arab Family Dancing |
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Ballet and Modern Dance Cities ~ Ballroom Dance Cities ~ Belly and Folk Dance Cities ~ Hip Hop and Modern Jazz Dance Cities ~ The Latin / Salsa Dance Cities ~ Swing Dance Cities . ] [ The Ithaca Dance Directory ]
Dance in Baghdad
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Add your content here
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Baghdad Art --- Cultural Communications --- Ithaca Art
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Add your content here
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Add your content here
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Add your content here
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Add your content here
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Add your content here
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Add your content here
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