Just a link to a handy website, brought to you by Public Citizen, guiding you through all the ins and outs of one of the Bush Administration’s clearest and strongest changes to government policy: drastically increased government secrecy and public disinformation. The website is Bushsecrecy.org, and it is divided into a few simple sections: Regulatory … Read more Bushsecrecy.org
My friend John Gehner just told me about this watershed piece of investigative reporting by James Bamford, an article from Rolling Stone that won the 2006 National Magazine Award in the “Best Reporting” category: The Man Who Sold the War. It is about John Rendon, who heads the “perception management” firm that was hired by … Read more John Rendon – the Goebbels of our era
Dear Friend of the Library of Congress, We are sending you this message because the Library of Congress Professional Guild, AFSCME Local 2910, needs your help. For over thirty years our union has worked with management to forge a constructive relationship at the Library of Congress. Together we have built a modern and progressive workplace … Read more Urgent message from LoC Professional Guild
The Progressive Librarians Guild endorsed a petition to impeach President Bush and to have Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales tried for war crimes by an international tribunal. The petition, written by Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois Law School and Joan Russow of the Global Compliance Research Project, is carefully framed within the … Read more Progressive Librarians Guild calls for Bush’s impeachment and trial for war crimes
Here’s a little detail about the present government that everybody should know. The Office of the Vice President, along with all executive branch offices, is required to submit a list of its staff for publication in the government’s “Plum Book,” and is required to submit statistics on its document classification activities. Cheney has been refusing … Read more Dick Cheney’s stealth operation
This is really funny.
I announced this earlier but deleted the post when I saw that I needed to make some changes to how I was doing these things. So now, with some things redone…. Two new features on the Library Juice Press website… First, a Friends’ Group, where friends and supporters of Library Juice Press can communicate on … Read more LJP Friends Group and Email Announcements
Frank Furedi in the free-thinking Spiked has an interesting essay in defense of denial (as in holocaust denial, AIDS denial, etc.). His position is that illiberal intolerance of such heresies breeds more of them and breeds an illiberal society. It is a good exposition of some classical principles of intellectual freedom, but stated more categorically … Read more In defense of denial
Recently a reader commented on a posting about Rick Anderson of last March, defending the idea that librarians should be “invisible facilitators of the flow of information in a capitalist society,” which is how I interpreted the intentions of Anderson and others like him (though I am sure that they would take issue with that). … Read more Rivers and dams
ALA Council Report to SRRT, Midwinter 2007 Greetings once again to SRRT members, old and new. Following up on our previous successes, in Seattle we introduced a resolution aimed at lobbying the Congress to defund the Iraq War. The resolution referenced our past successful resolutions since 2003, which addressed securing Iraqi cultural resources and rebuilding … Read more Al Kagan’s report to SRRT on ALA Council, Midwinter Meeting, Seattle ’07