- It is yet another outrage from the same neocon cabal
that brought us the privatization of federal and state emergency response
and the military --privatization of "public" libraries.
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- Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a story on the Medford,
Oregon public library system, which closed its doors last April after running
out of money,. The Medford libraries have now been outsourced to a Germantown,
Maryland corporation called Library Systems and Services, Inc. (LSSI).
Jackson-Madison County, Tennessee; Riverside County, California; and
Redding, San Juan, Moorpark, and Leander, California, in addition to other
communities, have outsourced their libraries to LSSI.
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- Bedford, Texas rejected an attempt to turn over its libraries
to LSSI. Fargo, North Dakota severed its contract with LSSI as did Jersey
City, New Jersey. The Jersey City contract was pushed by neocon Republican
Mayor Bret Schundler. His successor, Democrat Glenn Cunningham, canceled
the contract.
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- Cunningham, Jersey City's first African-American mayor,
died of a sudden heart attack in 2004. Schundler may have been the original
impetus for opening discussions with a company called Information Spectrum,
Inc., a division of Anteon, to take over Jersey City's emergency 911 telecommunications
system. The incumbent contractor for the system, Larimore, had its contract
suddenly dropped after Cunningham's death. Eight thousand emergency 911
calls made on September 11, 2001, were scrubbed from the system. Jersey
City has been a locus for individuals involved with the 1993 and 2001 World
Trade Center attacks. The Jersey City Public Library system would have
served as an excellent surveillance vantage point targeting the city's
large Arab American and Muslim population.
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- The FBI has made no secret of its use of National Security
Letters aimed at library circulation records of readers. Although public
library employees have resisted government surveillance, the same may not
hold true with privatized "at will" library employees.
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- Privatization of "public" libraries may seem
like an oxymoron, but the cut-back in pubic funds for social services is
opening the doors for privatization of public services in a number of areas.
Library employees see the move as a way to bust their unions, since LSSI
is re-hiring employees under a no-union clause.
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- However, there is another menacing aspect to the privatization
of public libraries. LSSI and other companies have the responsibility of
purchasing books. However, no corporation ever acts in the public interest,
only in making their stockholders and corporate executives handsome
profits and salaries.
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- The American Library Association, a longtime defender
of First Amendment rights, has taken a critical stance against privatization
of public libraries.
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- If a private library corporation decides that books on
man-made climate change do not sit well with their corporate investors,
stockholders, or partners, do not expect to find books by Al Gore on a
privatized library shelf. Or if Rupert Murdoch decides to extend his sinister
neocon web to cover privatized libraries, expect a new era of "virtual
book burning." Coming off the shelves will be Michael Moore, John
Dean, Frank Rich, Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson, and other critics of the
right-wing. Going on the shelves will be books by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh,
Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich.
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- The move to privatize "public" libraries is
yet another slide towards a fascist society.
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- Copyright 2005-2007 WayneMadsenReport.com
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