Who's going to investigate
The man who investigates
The man who investigates me

I was listening to the news on NPR's "Morning Edition" this morning as I usually do and heard a rather disturbing report that conjured up a specter from the past:   the Canwell Committee. The Canwell Committee in Washington State came into being during the late Forties. It's purpose was to track down and blacklist a number of professors at the University of Washington whose political views were deemed "unacceptable." The same thing began to spread all over the country. This was precursor to the whole thing going national, and with that came the McCarthy era.

On a more international basis, this sort of thing was also a precursor to the Third Reich in the Thirties, the rigid control of the Soviet Union for decades, or currently, aspects, that the U. S. objects to in the domestic policies of countries such as China and North Korea.

If you have Windows Media Player or RealPlayer, you can hear the report here:   NPR report, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006. I don't know how long they archive these stories, so you might want to catch it quickly.

This sent me on a google search, and there are a few items about this, but so far, the pickings are slim.

The upshot of the story is that at UCLA, the "Bruin Alumni Association," organized about a year ago, is offering $100 to students who are willing to keep track of UCLA professors and instructors over a ten-week period whom the student deems "liberal" or "left-wing." It was started by one Andrew Jones.

So far, I've heard nothing on other stations or the news media in general about this. Apparently one must listen to news services such as NPR (deemed by right-wingers as part of the "liberal media" primarily because they report stories that American citizens, if they are to be an informed electorate, need to know, but that you will not hear anywhere else, especially not on Fox News Service) or go to overseas news media to find out what's going on in this country. Here's a story on this in The Guardian.

I wonder how many more such "monitoring groups" there are. There is a very bad stench in this country.

Don Firth