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Jon Frater

“Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”

May 5, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

"Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries’ leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London’s Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain’s CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration’s plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur."

The rest of the article is here.

And from the memo itself for people who are pressed for time:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

[Read more…] about “Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”

Filed Under: Politics

Resource Shelf = Da Bomb!

May 4, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I don’t know when or if Gary Price actually sleeps, but I’m glad he doesn’t (or sddesn’t seem to, anyway.) His Resource Shelf website is one of the best things I’ve seen in online Libraryland in a long while. (Not that I get out that often but when I do, and I find something like this, it’s doubly cool.)

Price and his editors have made it their goal to seek out and report on every single reference source on every subject known to mankind, and make all these links available to poor time-starved slobs like you and me (well . . . okay, like me. I’m sure you are not a slob . . . and if, on the remote chance that you are a slob, I’m positive that you manage your time a helluva lot better than I manage mine. That’s probably why people are not coming up to you on the street, flashing shiny gold bages in your face, demanding answers to questions like "What’s Number 6 up to? We know you know, now tell us!") And if that’s not enough for you (and if it’s not, then what kind of freak are you anyway?), they have a weekly e-mail service that dumps the latest week of daily links and annotation into your mailbox every Thursday.

This is one of the best sites ever.

At any rate, I’m linking this site to the Library Resources typelist . . . NOW!

Filed Under: Weblogs

An Open Letter to Deroy Murdoch of the National Review Online

May 3, 2005 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

A few days ago I found this article from the National Review online, where Deroy Murdoch claims that the only way to defend the lives of Americans is to limit access to our libraries to nice people. How we’d do this is to make sure the PATRIOT Act applied to libraries. The upshot is that librarians interested in defending our civil liberties are actually aiding and abetting terrorists.

Being an M.L.S., my first reaction is: get real. My second and third reactions are not that different, so I won’t bother writing them here. What I think is (short version) that Murdoch and his masters at the NRO are trying to freak out their readers to increase their daily ratings (call them "hits", "click-throughs", "eyeballs", they’re synonymous) and use the increased traffic to sell more ad space. Am I being a cynic? You bet, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily wrong (I worked in publishing too, once upon a time–and my wife works in publishing now, so maybe I’m not talking entirely out of my ass).

Even if Murdoch is correct and the Patriot Act really is the best law since the 1st Amendment, what he proposes is at best partial solution–remember there were 19 hijackers that day, and if 5 did their research here, 14 of them did not. If we ban every last Arab from our public buildings, well, that leaves the white Muslims, doesn’t it? My point is that this sort of thing doesn’t work in real life and we should know better than to try.

Anyway, my letter to Murdoch is behind the link.

[Read more…] about An Open Letter to Deroy Murdoch of the National Review Online

Filed Under: Politics

Do Libraries Still Matter? You Betcha!

May 2, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

A coworker turned me on to an article by Dan Akst in the most recent Carnegie Reporter. The article is entitled “Do Libraries Still Matter?”, and one would hope that the answer to the question is still ‘yes!” although one can also see the questioners point of view. It’s definitely worth looking at, and not just because the author gets heavily into Andrew Carnegie’s contribution to American library development. There’s a rule of thumb for you: capitalists like libraries and everything (well, many things) they represent, totalitarians do not. The next time you hear a politician talking about reducing funds for libraries or limiting how they may be used and by whom, remember that little rule and much becomes clearer.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

How to be Your Own Publisher

April 25, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I found this article in the NY Times’ Book Review section yesterday, and while self-publishing has had an inarguably democratizing effect on the world of literature and research over the past decade, I personally think it’s had the side-effect of dropping the average worth of the content of those subjects just abit (mor than a bit in some cases.) Having said that, (and probably sounding like an eletist to at least a few people), I think it’s something worth knowing about.

Enjoy!

[Read more…] about How to be Your Own Publisher

Filed Under: Books

In Praise of Library Personnel

April 19, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I subscribe to the technical service librarians listserv that Margaret Mauer runs off of Ohio’s Kent State U. servers, and while I rarely post, it’s always interesting to see what librarians halfway across the country (well, okay a third of the way, but that’s kind of wordy) are doing differently from those of us in NYC. Today’s Great Tidbit was posted by Ian Fairclough from the Marion, OH Public Library this morning.

Read it, print it out, share it with your coworkers . . . this one’s a keeper.

In Praise of Library Personnel by George G. Morgan

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Academy Library Newsletter, April 2005

April 18, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Welcome to the April 2005 issue of the Academy Library Newsletter. The newsletter is published quarterly to keep you updated on our products and services, changes the library collection and available resources, and other bits of interesting news.

We’d like to particularly draw your attention to the piece titled "New Publication Policy for NIH-Funded Research" as this may impact many of you who work on NIH-funded grant projects.

View the full text of the newsletter

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Friday Joy, Tax Day Blues

April 15, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

A Public Service Announcement

First of all, click here to print Form 4868, which is the extension to file for 2004.

I met Joanne from the Regional Medical Library group on line for coffee this morning; we’re both dressed in black to remember the victims of April 15 2005. Today is kind of weird—on the one hand it’s Friday (Yaaaaaaaaay!) but on the other hand it’s also Tax Day (Uuuuuuuggghhh!), so equal parts of joy and horror loom large for most of the country.

At any rate, I was told that if you have some time tonight on the way home from work and are so inclined (and most especially if you have sent in your forms some time ago, like before you read this) you can talk a stroll past Madison Square Garden along 34th Street and take a gander at the poor bastards who are willing to stand in line for hours waiting to get their forms, signed, sealed, and mailed before midnight. Apparently it’s a big event (Joanne called it “a hoot”) . . . people swap war stories, hand out candy, and generally make whatever merry they can under the circumstances. Heck, apparently you can see people filling the damn forms out while on line.

The bastard in me hears this and has a bit of a schadenfreude moment that I got my forms and estimated payments sent in a week ago, but the humanitarian says, “You know, you really should have a bit of compassion for these guys.”

Well, okay. I have compassion. A bit.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

New York Public Library to Sell Major Artworks to Raise Funds

April 12, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Carol Vogel at the Times breaks it to art collectors everywhere: if you have $100 million burning a hole in your pocket, here’s you chance to difersify.

"The New York Public Library has decided to sell 19 works of art from its collection – including "Kindred Spirits," a widely admired landscape by the Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand, and two seminal portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart – so that it can better compete in acquisitions of important books and collections."

Read the article here.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act

April 7, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Found this article on Tomdispatch.com this afternoon . . .

"In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA Patriot Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now Attorney General, and Senator Arlen Specter (R., PA):

GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the committee and the American people that the department has no interest in rummaging through the library records or the medical records of Americans.

That is not something that we have an interest in.

SPECTER: Does that mean you’d agree to excluding them?

GONZALES: We do have an interest, however, in records that may help us capture terrorists. And there may be an occasion where having the tools of 215 to access this kind of information may be very helpful to the department in dealing with the terrorist threat.

The fact that this authority has not been used for these kinds of records means that the department, in my judgment, has acted judiciously. It should not be held against us that we’ve exercised, in my judgment, restraint.

It’s comparable to a police officer who carries a gun for 15 years and never draws it. Does that mean that for the next five years he should not have that weapon, because he’s never used it?

SPECTER: Attorney General Gonzales, I don’t think your analogy is apt, but if you want to retain those records, as your position I understand. And let me move on. "

Read the full article here.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

NYAM Lecture–Looks Like a Good One!

April 6, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

When Germs Travel: Epidemics and Immigrants in the 20th Century
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Howard Markel, MD, PhD
Thursday, April 21, 6:00 PM
Reception, 5:30PM

[Read more…] about NYAM Lecture–Looks Like a Good One!

Filed Under: Events

From Today’s NY Times

April 4, 2005 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

This is not the sort of thing one wants to see in the paper first thing in the morning, but it’s not the she sort of thing librarians can afford not to notice either. Anyway, here’s a link to the article and the text is behind the "Continue Reading" link.

[Read more…] about From Today’s NY Times

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

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