Pete Seeger and the blacklist

In reading about Pete Seeger on the web yesterday, I came across his testimony when he was hauled up before the House Un-American Affairs Committee in August 1955. This was the infamous Congressional committee that would order people to appear before them and quiz them about their political affiliations. If the people were willing to ‘prove their loyalty’ by renouncing their prior beliefs and associations and naming other people as being either Communists or fellow travellers or sympathizers, they would get lenient treatment. But if they did not, they would be accused of being pro-Communist. The committee targeted members of the entertainment industry, seeing them as being influential in shaping public opinion. Pete Seeger and his group The Weavers were blacklisted in the early 1950s. [Read more…]

How money came to so dominate politics in the US

Last evening I went to talk given by Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He is a prolific author on the media and politics and he was speaking about the ideas in his new book (co-authored with John Nicholls) titled Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America in which he argues that the idea of ‘one person, one vote’ has now become ‘one dollar, one vote’. [Read more…]

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger died today. He was an American treasure, a powerful voice for justice and peace all throughout his long and colorful life, whose musical and political influence extended well beyond the borders of the USA. I had heard of Seeger and knew his songs growing up in Sri Lanka. This entry in Wikipedia captures the strength and consistency of the principles that drove him and his refusal to back down when asked to compromise those principles, even if it meant going to jail. [Read more…]

Nevada’s same-sex marriage ban may be in trouble

Nevada is the latest state in which the ban on same-sex marriage may be in legal trouble, and it happened in a rather oblique way. The ban had been challenged in court by eight same–sex couples, four of whom had been denied marriage licenses in Nevada and four of whom had been married in other states and were demanding that Nevada recognize their marriages. The case is Sevcik v. Sandoval and the couples lost in the District Court but appealed to the Ninth Circuit court of Appeals. [Read more…]

NSA involved in industrial sabotage

In an interview with a German public broadcaster ARD TV, Edward Snowden dismantles yet another defense put out by supporters of president Obama and the NSA that, unlike those evil Chinese, Russian, and other governments who indulge in industrial espionage in order to get American business and trade secrets and thus benefit their own national industries, the US only spies as part of counter-terrorism efforts. [Read more…]

Republican party condemns government spying

The Republican National Committee at its winter meeting by a voice vote on Friday passed a “Resolution To Renounce The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program” which said that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution” and that “unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society and this program represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy and goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act.” [Read more…]

NSA telephone spying is illegal, useless, and likely unconstitutional

A new report has been released by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that was created by Congress in 2004 to serve as “an independent, bipartisan agency within the executive branch” to “review and analyze actions the executive branch takes to protect the Nation from terrorism, ensuring the need for such actions is balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties” and to “ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of laws, regulations, and policies related to efforts to protect the Nation against terrorism.” [Read more…]