digital polemics: Egypt’s Wael at the IMF meeting, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange vs NY Timesat Logan Symposium. A cyberculture roundup

Wael the Plumber: Egypt’s Google revolutionary mixes it up at the IMF

Along with cherry blossoms, spring means IMF annual meetings here in Washington along with some always intriguing panel discussions. The most highly anticipated talk at this year’s confab was this morning’s roundtable on “Youth, Jobs, and Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and North Africa,” featuring IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Columbia University professor and Middle East Channel contributor Rashid Khalidi, the International Labor Organization’s Nada al-Nashif, Tunisian Central Bank Governor Mustapha Nabli, and Egyptian Google executive-turned-revolutionary Wael Ghonim.

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, NY Times Feud at Logan Symposium

BERKELEY, CALIF. — I am at the 5th Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium, a gathering of the top investigative journalists that happens each year at University of California at Berkeley. Lowell Bergman, a professor at the school and former “60 Minutes” producer and longtime investigative journalist, brings together an invite-only crowd of journalists, technologists, academics and more. The title of the conference is “Leaks, Laws & Lies” and will include a live Skype call with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.

(You can see previous coverage of post Logan Symposiums by PBS MediaShift here.)

Social Media’s Role as a Crucial Lifeline During Japan Disaster

This is the story of seven people connected by the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake that rocked northern Japan in March and their need to obtain immediate and accurate information. Mass confusion combined with their desire to reach loved ones compelled them to turn to social media as a lifeline.

FCC?s Net Neutrality Rules Rejected By House of Representatives

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to restrict the FCC?s ability to regulate how Internet service providers manage their networks, a move that could endanger net neutrality if it were to pass both houses of Congress.

House Joint Resolution 37, ?Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to regulating the Internet and broadband industry practices,? passed the House with a vote of 240 to 179, mostly along party lines. The resolution specifically condemns the Federal Communications Commission?s new net neutrality rules and ?prohibits such rule from having any force or effect.?

Facebook friends Baidu … and Beijing?

In December, following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s visit to Beijing to hobnob with China’s tech elite, I wrote a piece for FP asking, Will Facebook Friend China?Now Bloomberg is reporting the answer is yes. Facebook Inc. has signed anagreement with Baidu Inc. to set up a social-networking websitein China, Sohu.com reported, citing unidentified employees atthe Chinese search-engine company. The agreement followed several meetings between FacebookChief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Baidu CEO Robin Li,Sohu.com reported on its website today. The China website wontbe integrated with Facebooks international service, and thestart date is not confirmed, according to the report. This would give Facebook access, at last, to China’s 420 million-and counting Internt users.

How New Community Tools Will Democratize Data Analytics for the Good of Society

by Andrew Turner

Morozov vs.(?) Tufekci at the US Naval Academy

I was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD yesterday, at the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference, a remarkable institution that I confess I knew nothing about before accepting an invitation to speak here. For 51 years, the Academy has opened its doors to students from the other service academies, political science students from non-military institutions, and to military cadets from other countries for annual discussions about foreign policy and international affairs. The conference is organized primarily by the naval midshipmen and it?s one of the best-run academic conferences I?ve attended. I had the great pleasure of delivering the opening keynote for the conference Tuesday morning ? I?ll try to post those notes later this week ? and these notes reflect my liveblogging from the audience of a very interesting conversation.

The Open-Sourcing of Political Activism: How the internet and networks help build resistance , Aaron Peters and Guy Aitchison

Lawsuit Against YouTube Threatens Global Growth of Political Speech

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of advocacy groups have asked a federal appeals court to reject attempts to thwart federal copyright law and saddle online communities with new litigation fears in the appeal of Viacom v. YouTube.

Facebook Boosts Site?s Availability And Page Load Times

Facebook has improved in availability and page loading times, according to the latest quarterly report by AlertSite.

Facebook?s up time during the first quarter of 2011 was 99.88 percent, meaning Facebook has moved above what AlertSite considers the benchmark average for response times, 99.77 percent.

Greenpeace Aims To Break Facebook Comment Record

As nearly 50,000 responses to a single Facebook post have gone up within about 8 hours, Greenpeace appears well on its way to breaking a world record.

The campaign attempts a friendlier tactic (bad pun intended) to further  the organization?s ongoing effort to pressure the social network to stop using coal to power data centers.