MEDIA ROOTS — In a 2004 campaign stop for George W. Bush, former vice president and war criminal Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about same sex couples. He responded with the following:

“Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with….With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. … People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to…..The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that’s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage.”

In 2004, Obama took a similar position when he was an Illinois state senator.  However, his position changed when he began his presidential bid in 2007.  Obama’s stance ‘evolved’ into a wishy-washy proclamation of the acceptance of same-sex couples while refraining from classifying it as traditional marriage.  Over the years, Obama’s ‘faith’ played more of a factor.

“I’m not in favor of gay marriage. I’m in favor of civil unions.” –Obama, 2007

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. I’m not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.” –Obama, 2008

To the surprise of many, he just reversed his position to officially endorse same sex marriage in an ABC news interview—this time as sitting president.  It is a curiously timed announcement, right at the beginning of his re-election campaign.  Could it be in part an attempt to gain back some of the liberal base he lost with his first term continuation of Bush policies?

Some gay advocacy groups say that if they hadn’t put continuous pressure on the president about the issue, that nothing would have been accomplished, and Obama would continue to remain ‘unsure.’  If this is indeed the case, it points to the need for every activist group to continue putting pressure on Obama.  Instead of taking a ‘hands off’ approach to ensure the safety of his second term and hoping that only then will he create change, they should be actively lobbying to him for their cause. 

Other groups say that Obama simply hasn’t gone far enough and that leaving it up to the states is effectively a cop-out.  States can still choose to ban gay marriage if they wish.  Regardless, at Media Roots we can’t deny the positive symbolic power and sweeping effect this will have on the LGBT as well as homophobic sectors of the United States population.

Robbie Martin for Media Roots

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MOTHER JONES — A president endorsing, even as a “personal position,” marriage equality for gays and lesbians is, as Vice President Joe Biden once said, a big fucking deal. But Obama has endorsed marriage equality federalism—not the notion that marriage for gays and lesbians is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution that can never be taken away. Obama has adopted the same position that Vice President Dick Cheney did in 2004, when Cheney said he believed in marriage equality but that the states should be allowed to decide by a show of hands, as North Carolina did Tuesday, whether gays and lesbians have the same rights as everyone else.

Cheney served in an administration that was extremely hostile to gay rights. With the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the administration’s refusal to defend in court the federal ban on same-sex marriage, and Wednesday’s endorsement of same-sex marriage federalism, Obama is the most pro-LGBT rights president in US history. Nevertheless, the position he articulated today accepts the legitimacy of states like North Carolina subjecting the rights of gays and lesbians to a popular vote.

In other words, Obama has left room for more evolution.

Read more about Obama Endorses Marriage Equality, But Not For All.

Photograph: public domain

RT TV — Mumia Abu Jamal is an African American writer, journalist and activist whose infamous prison case has sparked international outrage for decades.  In 1981, Mumia was charged with first degree murder for allegedly killing a police officer, but many have disputed the evidence that put him behind bars and demand for him to be re-tried.

He has spent the last 29 years of his life on death row, but in January of this year the sentence was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  At the “Occupy the Justice” rally in Washington DC, Abby Martin of RT spoke with protesters who gathered in solidarity with the Occupy Movement to “Occupy the Justice Department” on Mumia’s 58th birthday.

Hundreds rallied in front of the Department of Justice to call attention to not only Mumia’s case, but also to the inequalities of the US justice system, the privatization of the prison industry and to end mass incarceration in the US, where currently one out of every 100 Americans are in jail.

People have long used Mumia’s case to lobby attention to the inherent corruption and racial inequality in the American prison system.

Mumia supporter Matthew Johnson equated the racial injustice surrounding Mumia Abu Jamal to the controversial case of the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. “It’s the whole idea that if you’re black, you’re somehow more dangerous than a white person. [In the case of Trayvon] you’re carrying iced tea and Skittles and wearing a hoodie and somehow you’re a threat to a man who weighs 60 pounds more than you who has a gun. It just wouldn’t happen the other way around.”

He continues to explain that this particular case needs to be broadened in the context of social justice for everyone, regardless of color or creed.

Some came to protest more generally what they called the prison industrial complex, in which government and corporations collude to keep the private prisons occupied to capacity with prisoners. Activist Kevin Price elaborates on the growing trend of for profit prisons. “As violent crime rates have fallen and imprisonment rates have skyrocketed, it just doesn’t make sense unless you are looking at [the issue] in the context of for profit incarceration,” he says.

Although the reduced sentence for Mumia was seen as a hopeful step for some, others claimed that it was simply a political strategy to appease the public while still not making any significant overtures towards justice for Mumia.

“That’s their way of trying to turn their back on the issue and get political with [it]… but justice requires that the innocent be free,” declares Baba Zayed Muhhamad, national minister of culture for the New Black Panther Party.

He continues to describe how the two most prominent African American politicians, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, have turned their back on the black generation. “Barack Obama made the mistake of saying that we’re the ones that we’ve been waiting for, and we’re not going to wait on them. We’re going to see that we get justice for that generation and… better opportunities to create justice for our children. We’re not going to compromise with that.”

Abby Martin for RT

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MEDIA ROOTS — In order to move from a liberal capitalist society, organised around elite interests, to a socialist political and economic system run by and for working people, the problem of false consciousness among the USA’s working-class must be confronted, argues Dr. Jeremy Cloward of Diablo Valley College in his paper entitled “The State, Class And False Consciousness Within the American Working Class.”

Messina

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PROJECT CENSORED — In the United States the American working class has seen itself become increasingly involved in fighting imperialistic wars abroad, financing a growing military budget, and losing its social safety net at home yet at the same time regularly acting politically inconsistent with their own class interests.  This has been to the gain of US-based multinational corporations and to the detriment of working people.  Until the working class in the United States realizes that the predominantly corporate-controlled state does not serve their personal and class interests they will not see any significant improvement in their lives.   On the contrary, as long as working people continue to support the two major parties they can expect to see many more years of corporate dominance of the United States political, economic and social system.  The primary issue that working people must address to resolve this problem is the question of false consciousness.

False Consciousness                         

False consciousness is a term derived from the Marxist tradition which identifies a state of mind of an individual or a group of people who neither understand their class interests nor act politically consistent with those concerns.  Karl Marx, himself, did not use the term false consciousness.  However, many who are intellectually aligned with the Marxist tradition trace the concepts’ origin back to a theory first developed by Marx known as commodity fetishism.  Commodity fetishism is the idea that people place a value on commodities apart from the ones which they intrinsically possess.  For example, a diamond, once it becomes a commodity, is not simply a rock with the properties of a rock but instead an object that people value and admire as if the rock possessed some built-in power which makes it different and more valuable than any other rock.

False consciousness as a concept was first used by Marx’s friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels in July of 1893 in a letter to Franz Mehring.  While writing about the concept of historical materialism he claimed that “ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all.”[2]  Thus Engels, in two brief sentences coins the term and argues that false consciousness and ideology (i.e., worldview) are intellectual constructs.

Read more about The State, Class, and False Consciousness.

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Photo by Flickr user Steve Rhodes

RT TV — One out of every 100 citizens in the US is behind bars, and most of them are minorities. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but holds one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. The prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping people locked up, and Wells Fargo is one of the companies that is profiting for the practice and pushing for legislation that will maximize their profits.

Russ Baker, editor-in-chief for WhoWhatWhy, joins Abby Martin to give his take on private prisons.

Axel Caballero, founder of Cuentame, joins Abby Martin to speak about the prison industrial complex.

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Also check out the related Media Roots article Wells Fargo Profits From Private Prisons.

Messina

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Photo by flickr user mocvdleung

MEDIA ROOTS — A new law proposed in the UK could erode privacy to a level not yet seen in any western country (besides the United States).  The law mimics the warrantless wiretapping and ‘sneak and peak’ provisions laid out in the now eleven-year old U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. 

Robbie Martin of Media Roots

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ZDNET — Controversial new British legislation could allow the UK’s electronics intelligence agency GCHQ access in real-time data of phone calls, emails, social networks, and Web traffic by all UK residents.

The UK is already the most surveilled country in the world, with number plate recognition systems, ISP deep-packet inspection, and a surveillance camera seemingly on every corner. These proposals would propel the UK into the lacking privacy realms of China, Burma, and Russia. But it already faces the possibility of stiff opposition at a European level unless safeguards are put into place that limits the scope of that monitoring. Though yet to be announced in the Queen’s speech, set for around May, which dictates the UK government’s legislative agenda for the year, it would allow the widespread monitoring of citizens’ activity — despite current UK laws making such actions only available by court-ordered search warrants.

Likened to the U.S.’ Patriot Act, it would grant the UK government access to personal data of ordinary citizens, despite the government’s defence that only certain people will be actively investigated.
Data collected would include the time a call, email, or website was visited, the duration of which, and which websites or phone numbers were called. Details of the sender and recipient of emails, such as IP addresses, would also be collected. Everything scrap of data will be stored by ISPs, but not all of this data will be made available to GCHQ without a court order or Home Secretary-sanctioned authority.

Read more about UK’s ‘Patriot Act’ Web monitoring law could face European veto. 

Photo by Flickr user Kevin Hoogheem