This weekend's Clearwater Festival will be the first without Pete and Toshi Seegers, founders and mainstays of the Clearwater organization, started 49 years ago. Pete Seeger lived their lives as peoples' artists, fighting for peace, civil rights, nuclear disarmament, defense of the environment, and as a socialists.
On June 19, 1953, hours before their execution, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg wrote one final letter to their two young sons: Michael and Robby. Your lives must teach you, too, that good cannot really flourish in the midst of evil; that freedom and all the things that go to make up a truly satisfying and worthwhile life, must sometimes be purchased very dearly...civilization had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life.
Interesting new developments calling for end of ban on travel and trade with Cuba, and for full normalization of relations with socialist Cuba, our closest neighbor in the Caribbean. Open letter to Obama signed by former government officials, including ones who served in his Cabinet. Business groups in the U.S. are now clamoring for a change in policy. Today, Thomas Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headed a business delegation to Cuba.
One of the great "What if?" questions of the 20th century is how America would have been different if Henry Wallace rather than Harry Truman had succeeded Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. Filmmaker Oliver Stone has revived this debate in his current ten-part Showtime series, "The Untold History of the United States," and his new book (written with historian Peter Kuznick) of the same name.
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