[extropy-chat] A little side project I'm interested in

[Brett Paatsch]

Its fascinating to me that so many folks still don't realise that the US
congress ratified the UN Charter. That the UN Charter was if you like a
previous generation of Americans gift to succeeding generations.

An instrument of and for peace-making policy forged by the hands of a
warrior generation that had not just the war genes in their cells but war
memes vividly in their personal life histories and as an integral and 
pressing part of their memories.

Perhaps not at the exact instant, but figuratively, even as Harry Truman
was contemplating the terrible calculus of whether to bomb Hiroshima 
the United Nations Charter was on his mind. 

>From a US State Department web site I gleaned the fact that by a vote
of either 89 or 87 (memory fails) to 2, the US Senate approved the 
ratification of the UN Charter. 

I got it into my head that I would like to read the text of the debates those
Senators, those representatives of their respective states, some Republican
some Democrat must have had in getting to the point of agreeing to ratify
the charter, (I know something of how fiercely states rights are guarded even
within the union) so I sent an email to US Senate library and received a very
helpful response from a librarian there about sources I might seek out.

Taking that response, nicely and concisely summarised in the timesaving
manner that email allows I forwarded it on to a librarian at an academic
university here in Australia to see if the relevant documents were available
here. I hoped to read them and perhaps make copies and perhaps make
at least some of what is not available on the net (to my knowledge) available. 

You see I wanted to read the text of speeches that are from an era and 
a country that is not only not my own, but predated the great digitisation
of documents that has occurred in recent decades. 

Anyway, at a library here in Melbourne, I found the Congressional Reports
on Microfiche but alas they stop, frustratingly, just before the time I am 
interested in and the Melbourne Uni librarian, skilled in the way that librarians
can be, checked for me the availability of those reports for the time period I 
seek and determined that alas she could find none here in Australia. 

To assess the reports for the time period I seek I need access to a 
Federal Repository Library of which there are many in all the great states
of the US, including Hawaii. and yet there is none in Australia.

If there are any readers of this, that live in the US near a relevant library
that has the texts of those speeches from that period and is interested,
like me in what the Republicans of that day, some of which will have no
doubt continued to have distinguished careers and to great service for
their country said at that time, then I would be grateful if you would 
contact me. 

My idea is to discover the wisdom of an earlier and yet relevant era and
to remind the current generation or those that will listen, that previous
generations fought hard and thought hard before establishing some of the
still imperfect institutions and systems that the current generations can
take for granted and as part of their heritage today. 

I know from the material that I have been able to gather that both Republicans
and Democrats were actively involved in the forging of the UN.  Tom Connolly
of Texas and Vandenburg of Michigan if memory serves. I do have their
speeches commending, with the then President, Harry Truman, the UN Charter
to the Senate.

So far I just have not been able to get the speeches for the Senators that
were not ambassadors.  I am also especially interested in the speeches
if any from those two dissenters. 

Brett Paatsch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20050825/d1883ee2/attachment.html>