F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote - "How we stopped SOPA"

Barry Lando: Mali -- A Double Tale of Unintended Consequences With hundreds of French troops in Mali and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S., among other countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics, unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. The U.S. in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe. In fact, though, it turns out that the U.S. has already played a disastrous role in the crisis. According to an excellent New York Times account, for the past several years the United States has spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of radical Islam, America's "most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara." To that end, for five years U.S. Why?

Prosecutor as bully | LESSIG Blog, v2 France Mali Ground Assault And 'Direct Combat' To Be Launched Within Hours BAMAKO, Mali — French soldiers pressed north in Mali territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, launching a land assault that was to put them in direct combat with al-Qaida-linked fighters "in one to 72 hours," military officials said. Their presumed destination was the town of Diabaly, where fleeing residents said Islamist extremists had taken over their homes and were preventing other people from leaving. They said the militants were melting into the population and moving only in small groups on streets in the mud-walled neighborhoods to avoid being targeted by the French. "They have beards. In apparent retaliation for the French offensive, the same group controlling northern Mali occupied a natural gas complex in neighboring Algeria, taking dozens of people hostage, including Americans. French ground operations in Mali began overnight, France's military chief of staff, Adm. "I confirm that France came in by land, but they failed. ... Col. Last December, the U.N.

on information privilege. – info-mational The concept of information privilege situates information literacy in a sociocultural context of justice and access. Information as the media and messages that underlie individual and collective awareness and knowledge building; privilege as the advantages, opportunities, rights, and affordances granted by status and positionality via class, race, gender, culture, sexuality, occupation, institutional affiliation, and political perspective. In an extended period of relative disengagement with writing I have started and stopped and restarted this post so many times that it’s become a bit ridiculous, but based on the interest generated by discussions of information privilege in my teaching and speaking contexts it’s clearly time to finish. information privilege in practice Any type of information worker can examine this phenomenon and develop strategies to counter it. information privilege as pedagogy scaling the paywall “Why in the world does it cost so much?” “It doesn’t make sense!”

Gun Advocates Resort To Lies About Hitler To Push Their Agenda How bad is your argument when you have to lie about Hitler to try and make your case? Right-Wing claims of Nazi weapon roundups don’t hold up to scrutiny. Internet Arguments, Usenet, And Hitler. There is an old law on the internet. It was coined by Mike Godwin in 1990: In short, in a heated argument, eventually someone will bring up the Nazi’s, Hitler, etc, and the moment they do, the argument is over because the side that does it has just lost it. Absolutely nothing. Right-Wing Pundits Go For Broke In Claiming Obama Is Like Hitler. So, it was amusing when the Drudge Report posted this headline earlier this week: You know who else got a splash on the Drudge Report? Note the not-so-subtle attempt to compare firearm regulation with Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin. This year will go down in history! Reality Problem For The Radicals. This is of course complete bunk. Why was Hitler comfortable doing this, when all common wisdom is that dictators eliminate gun ownership?

processing the loss of Aaron Swartz The last 24 hours have been an emotional roller coaster. I woke up yesterday to find that a friend of mine – Aaron Swartz – had taken his life. My Twitter feed went into mourning – shock, sadness, anger, revenge. I spent the day talking with friends who were all in various states of disarray. For better or worse, I’ve known a lot of people over the years who have committed suicide. There’s no doubt in my mind that depression was a factor. I’ve known Aaron for nine years and I both adored him to pieces and found him frustrating as hell. What made me so overwhelmingly angry yesterday was the same thing that has been boiling in my gut for the last two years. Reasonable people can disagree about tactics and where and when a particular approach pushes too far. Yesterday, there was an outpouring of information about his case, including an amazing account from the defense’s expert witness. There is a lot of justifiable outrage out there.

WHITE HOUSE THREATENS 'EXECUTIVE ORDERS' ON GUNS Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns. "The president is going to act," said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. "There are executives orders, there's executive action that can be taken. We haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required." Biden said that this is a moral issue and that "it's critically important that we act." Biden talked also about taking responsible action.

Beyond the Collection Diversity Audit: Inclusion is More Than a Book, Why we should be auditing all of our library services for inclusion and best practices When I first began doing collection diversity audits, I had no idea that was what they were called. It was actually SLJ editor Kathy Ishizuka who gave me a name for what I was doing. I had Tweeted out pictures of me trying to figure out how inclusive my collection was and she said, “Oh, you’re doing a diversity audit”. And I thought, “Yes! That’s what I’m doing.” Doing diversity audits has radically changed how I approach and think about library services. Since doing that first collection diversity a few audit years ago, I have changed my approach in the ways that I do a lot of things, keeping an eye always towards analyzing myself for inclusive practices and challenging myself to step out of my personal default, which is a white cisgender Christian perspective. 1. I have not done storytimes for a really long time. 2. Although I am not currently in charge of doing any displays, at my last position I spent a lot of time analyzing and rewriting guidelines for how we approached displays.