via boingboing

For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America’s best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation’s extreme right wing. Its annual Values Summit is considered a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls, and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have spoken there. (The Family Research Council would not comment about Rekers’s Euro-trip.)

He has also influenced American government, serving in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state’s witness in favor of Florida’s gay adoption ban. A former research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, Rekers has published papers and books by the hundreds, with titles like “Who Am I? Lord” and “Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.”

“While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people,” says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. “His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”

more HERE and  “there were others escort says”

Planning to overthrow the US Government?

If yes, and you live in South Carolina, you must pay a five-dollar subversive registration fee. (Via BoingBoing, Via The Agitator)

The Banned Librarian has put together a clear concise guide to both current issues surrounding the Patriot Act, and the sections that are scheduled to sunset in December of 2009.

It includes:

HISTORY & BACKGROUND

• The PATRIOT Act Itself
• Treatises on the Law
• Helpful Articles
• Oversight & Watchdog Reports
• Prior Cases

STAYING CURRENT

• Pending Bills to Reform
• Outstanding Cases
• Useful Websites for Staying Current

Download the pdf HERE

I first heard this on NPR and then was reminded by the Provisions Library Blog (which is excellent).

The White House has created a new office, one of Social Innovation & Civic Participation, and has named Sonal Shah, who was in charge of global development at Google, as the lead. I haven’t heard as much about this as I’d like to, but apparently the office will identify “the most promising, results-oriented nonprofit programs” “that have had proven success in tackling social problems, such as homelessness and joblessness” and will fund them hopefully with a combination of  50,000,000 earmarked in the 2010 budget & matching funds from philantropists and large organizations. Ironically, the first hit under Google News on the new office  is from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, but only for subscribers..

From the UK Times Online & BoingBoing

Of the 248 inmates inside the detention facility, 44 are refusing food — but 33 of those are receiving nutrition with tubes that are forced up their noses and into their stomachs. On election night, according to one official, news of Mr Obama’s win spread across the prison facility even though no inmates had access to television that evening, and chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” erupted throughout the complex.

Human rights groups claim the total number of hunger strikers is higher than officials say. Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, says that more than 70 men held at the US base in Cuba are refusing to eat. She cited reports from visiting lawyers.

According to one official, most inmates are now well informed about what is happening in the outside world through a combination of watching Arabic news programmes and meetings with civilian lawyers and the International Red Cross, who are allowed to visit the facility. Most are aware of Mr Obama’s pledge to close the prison, which received its first inmates seven years ago this week. Asked why so many were on hunger strike and why the number was increasing, an official said: “This is the seventh anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees, and a week today is the inauguration of a new president. Hunger striking is an acknowledged form of protest.”

Via PLG and KYW

Judge Heidi fox has ruled in favor of library advocates. Mayor Nutter
cannot close 11 branches without first getting Philadelphia city council
approval.The end result, all of the branches slated to be permanently
closed as of New Years Eve will remain open. Library advocates have
maintained through this two days hearing that library branches are
essential to the fabric of the community; for the children, their
homework and hobbies and staying out of trouble (see previous stories).

For many single adults libraries help people with job applications and
resumes. And for older adults, just to keep busy, because after all,
they point out, fifty percent of Philadelphians don’t have computers in
their homes.Throughout these two days, the Nutter administration, said
it had to close these library branches because of an overall cutback
because of a worsening budget situation, and because of a state law,
City Hall must balance its budget in a current five-year plan which
projects a one billion dollar deficit.
The judge focused her entire case on an ordinance from 1988, a section
in an ordinance, section 16-43, that says any city owned building cannot
be abandoned or closed without city council approval.

http://www.kyw1060.com/For-Now–All-Phila–Library-Branches-to-Stay-Open/3577021

Some of you may know that I am at a conference in Quebec- IFLA ,to present a paper with Melisssa Morrone from BPL. I had heard tell of this but was forwarded this article tonight, I’ll post it in full. Needless to say this is outrageous and sad and frankly, embarassing.

“Twenty-seven librarians ran into difficulty trying to get visas for an international conference in Quebec City and 13 of them were refused, the president of the International Federation of Library Associations said yesterday.

“We had very few refused when we had our conference in Boston in 2001,” said president Claudia Lux. “This is really very strange and I can’t understand it at all. This is a very high number.”

Those refused included Dr. Fariborz Khosrav, the deputy director of the National Library of Iran, five Colombians, two each from Egypt and Nepal and one each from Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa. The 13th person’s name was unknown, she said.

The status of another was still undermined. They included six Iranians, two Nigerians and one each from Kenya, Mauritius and Turkey.

Victoria Okojie, president of the Nigerian Library Association, received an email from Citizenship and Immigration Canada yesterday inviting her to reapply, with no guarantees. The conference ends next Thursday but Okojie said she would give it another shot.

She was refused, said CIC spokesperson Danielle Norris, because she failed to supply banking statements, proof of income or evidence of strong family and financial ties to Nigeria.The decision, said Norris, is entirely based on providing exactly what the website asks for.

With 3,500 participants at the conference, 13 outright rejections means “they did very well,” she said.”

Sean Tevis is running for State Representative in Kansas against the super effed up Arlen Siegfried. He’s an Information Architect who seems to have some reasonably progressive views that don’t seem too abhorrent. He is looking for just 3000 people to donate $8.34 each. The current representative is an anti-choice, anti-environment, pro-censorship fool, and Kansas could use our support, since they have been getting the raw end of the deal for quite a while now.

Donate!

Thank goodness, both the ACLU and the EFF have filed suit in reaction to the passing of the overreaching and illegal wiretapping FISA bill.

More here, here and here.

Extra bummer? Obama voted for the bill. . Think Rosa Clemente would have supported it?

Thank you as always, BoingBoing

Today congress is set to pass the FISA Amendments act of 2008 bill, which will make it legal to wiretap anyone in America without a warrant. This includes your e-mails &  telephone conversations (landlines and cell) but also includes other kinds of tapping. BoingBoing posted a great video called “What Every American Needs To Know (and do) About FISA Before Wed., July 9th” with Daniel Ellsberg. I recently had the good fortune to see Daniel Ellsberg speak at the Annual ALA conference in Anaheim at the Alexander Street Press Breakfast. Ellsberg worked for the Rand Corp, The Pentagon and then for The State Department and in 1971 he leaked The Pentagon Papers to the press to illustrate that the government was committing a massive fraud against the public by stating among many other things that victory in Vietnam was possible and eminent. He wrote a book about it that sounds pretty interesting.

It’s not to late to do something. Watch The video, then visit the EFF’s Action Page to get info on contacting your representative.

Links:

to one of the BoingBoing articles, and another & to an excellent Slate article, and to the bill.