Steve Russell :
Half of an NSA intercept

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Little Rocket Man? Dotard here.

Kim Jong Un. Caricature by conescu / Flickr.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | May 29, 2018

I did over half of my Air Force hitch in USAF Security Service, the USAF branch of the National Security Agency. It was our job to hoover up radio traffic from the other side of the Iron Curtain and near the battlefields of the proxy wars. Then we had to translate the untreated sludge and prepare reports that the generals could hand to the civilians running the show.

The Pueblo, that Navy vessel that got grabbed by North Korea in 1968, was part of the Navy branch of NSA. It was putting the Big Ear on North Korea.
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Martha Mercado / Roger Baker :
METRO | Poor People’s Campaign
comes to Austin

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Demonstrators in 30 states call for a
moral revival.

Supporters of Poor People’s Campaign gather in Austin, May 14, 2018, at the Texas State Capitol. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

By Martha Mercado | Photos by Roger Baker | The Rag Blog | May 23, 2018

AUSTIN — On Monday, May 14, 2018, Texas was one of over 30 states to participate in the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival. More than 60 people gathered at the Texas State Capitol in solidarity with women, children, and disabled people living in poverty, including two busloads from Dallas. Also in attendance were individuals from San Antonio, Houston, Pasadena, and Waco.

The spirit of Dr. King resonated as faith leaders, community organizers, and concerned citizens came together to publicize and challenge the war on the poor. Songs of freedom filled the air as people approached the rally, including, “We Shall Not Be Moved,” a famous anthem from the Civil Rights era.
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Jim Simons :
The three-state solution

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

We are complicit in the apartheid and occupation imposed on the Palestinian people.

A Palestinian boy and Israeli soldier in front of the Israeli West Bank Barrier, August 2004. Justin McIntosh./ Wikimedia Commons.

By Jim Simons | The Rag Blog | May 20, 2018

The thing Trump loves best is attention. Perhaps for that reason it has become easy for foreign governments to manipulate our politics. That and a weak right-wing Congress.

If it’s not Putin, it is Netanyahu. In an earlier stunt that failed, Netanyahu spoke to Congress just before the Iran nuclear treaty was ratified, bypassing the president in a breach of protocol. Now he has produced a video purporting to “prove” that Iran was in violation of the treaty, laughable except for the fact that we may be heading toward war.

The likes of John Bolton are likely planning out strikes on Iran now. Netanyahu is more blatant than Putin was in a bald-faced attempt to get such a war going. He has long wanted it. A war for us to conduct, not Israel. On May 1, Amy Goodman reported on Democracy Now! that many experts had exposed Netanyahu’s clumsy attempt to create an illusion of evidence based solely on pre-treaty documents at least 15 years old.
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Glenn Smith and Thorne Dreyer :
METRO EVENT | Thursday’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ unites activists, artists

Posted on May 6, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

By Glenn Smith and Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog |
May 6, 2018

Event: Rhapsody in Blue
What: A convergence of culture and resistance politics
Media: Slam poetry, storytelling, musical performance
When: Thursday, May 10, 2018
Time: 7-9:30 p.m.
Where: The High Road on Dawson
Address: 700 Dawson Rd., Austin, TX 78704
Phone: 512-442-8535
Sponsors: Progress Texas and New Journalism Project (The Rag Blog & Rag Radio)
Charge: No admission; $10 donation to NJP optional.
Amenities: Food, cash bar, rooftop deck.

AUSTIN — Rhapsody in Blue (“Revelry for the Resistance’s Sake!”) is a celebration of music, poetry, storytelling and art with — and for — the Central Texas progressive community.

Jointly sponsored by PROGRESS TEXAS and the New Journalism Project, the event happens Thursday, May 10, from 7-9:30 p.m., at The High Road on Dawson, 700 Dawson Rd., Austin TX 78704.

According to Glenn Smith of PROGRESS TEXAS, “Artists always light the way out of dark times, and the political leadership has always championed artists’ freedom. We need each other.”
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Steve Russell :
Donald Trump and debts to America’s warriors

Posted on April 29, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

The dominant culture has a mixed record of looking after warriors when the war is over.

After allegations of misconduct, Admiral Ronny Jackson withdrew his name. Image by Donkey Hotey / Flickr.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | April 29, 2018

Traditionally, we Indians honor warriors. We honor not only our own warriors but also our adversaries when they act with honor as well as courage. We honor courage by offering warriors preferred ceremonial positions, by seeking their advice about the wisdom of going to war, and by devoting resources to tending their wounds and returning their economic losses.

The dominant culture has a mixed record of looking after warriors when the war is over. Trying to put warriors back in the position they would have occupied had they not gone to war is not awarding them an honor. It’s partial payment of a debt.
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Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Interviews with Lamar W. Hankins & Alan Pogue; Christopher Brown & Roddey Reid; Thorne Dreyer & Glenn Smith; Carl Davidson; Alice Embree, Kim Varela-Broxson & Lindsay Rodriguez; Roaul Hernandez; Steve Russell; and Philip Russell

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Our guests include authors & activists, political analysts, a music critic and a leftist icon; we talk about guns and feminism; and we bid Mexico’s president bye-bye.

Austin Chronicle music editor Raoul Hernandez in the KOOP studios in Austin, Feb. 23, 2018. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | April 16, 2018

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows with host and producer Thorne Dreyer. The syndicated Rag Radio program, produced in the studios of Austin’s cooperatively-run KOOP-FM, has an international audience and has become an influential platform for interviews with leading figures in politics, current events, literature, and cutting-edge culture.

The show first airs Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (CT) on KOOP, 91.7-FM in Austin, and streams live at KOOP.org and Radio Free America.
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Chellis Glendinning :
STORY | How to cross the border

Posted on April 15, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Raúl has forged hundreds of miles in thin huaraches through 100-degree saguaro desert.

Saguaro cactus in 100 degree-plus Sonoma Desert. Creative Commons image by NobbiP.

By Chellis Glendinning | The Rag Blog | April 15, 2018

“I came to the U.S. because in my ejido in Chihuahua, there isn’t enough money to buy toilet paper.”– Raúl Solís Salazar, answering Diné/Navajo ethnobotanist Donna House´s question, “Why did you risk everything to come to the U.S.?”

CHUQUISACA, Bolivia — Raúl has forged the border between Mexico and the U.S. so many times that he has the passage down to a craft. “They chase us down in the desert,” he told me. “They put up 25-foot walls, they add airplanes that fly without pilots, they make fences that sting like bees – but we always find a way to get through.”

He and his band of indocumentados in our village were always regaling me with their experiences, ideas, and opinions. They had pioneered the journey north in tight groups and, upon arrival, called their cousins back at the ejido so they too could launch using the same, now-proven routes.
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Jonah Raskin :
BOOKS | ‘There may not be answers’

Posted on April 11, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

We review Allen Young’s autobiography, ‘Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life.’

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | April 12, 2018

“Rejection of marginalization is certainly not the same as assimilation.” — Allen Young

Allen Young begins his autobiography in March 1970, with a march on the streets of Manhattan that was sponsored by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). It’s a good time and place to begin. After all, as Young himself explains he was “a pioneering gay activist” and New York was at that time, the place where he lived, worked, marched, and protested.

His identity as a gay man is at the heart of this book, though it also explores his life and times in the radical movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, and his experiences in rural, western Massachusetts on Butterworth Farm.
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Alan Pogue :
My General Theory of Relative Violence

Posted on April 11, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

The economic philosophy of violence & the cultural/historical development of violence in the U.S.

The Cross and the M-16. “In 1968, on the Army base in Chu Lai while I was still a chaplain’s assistant. By this time I knew I was in an Imperialist Army of Occupation so I set this photo up and had a fellow soldier take the picture.”

By Alan Pogue | The Rag Blog | April 11, 2018

Alan Pogue and Lamar W. Hankins will be Thorne Dreyer‘s guests on the syndicated Rag Radio show, Friday, April 13, 2018, first airing from 2-3 p.m. (CT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live: http://www.koop.org/listen-now. They will discuss Pogue’s article, below, and Hankins’ recent Rag Blog article, “Arguing about the Second Amendment is a waste of time” — and their somewhat divergent views on gun violence and gun control.

[Noted documentary photographer Alan Pogue is a fifth generation Texan. His ancestors came to the Texas coast, to McKinney’s Trading Post, from Dublin, Ireland, in 1840. The trading post later became Corpus Christi. He attended Catholic schools and was an altar boy for 13 years.

Alan has worked with peace and justice organizations in Austin and around the world since he returned from Vietnam in 1968 where he was a chaplain’s assistant and a combat medic. He is a Texas Department of Public Safety certified instructor for the License to Carry. He has saved several people from rape and murder on the streets of Austin. Once a combat medic, always a combat medic. See Alan’s Rag Blog article, “My history with violence.”]

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Harry Targ :
What gives me hope about this ‘Enough is Enough’ movement

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

These young people have begun to ‘teach their parents well.’

March for our Lives rally in Austin, Texas, March 24, 2018. Photo by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | April 10, 2018

I experienced the new youth movement following the Parkland massacre vicariously: through television, radio, and social media. I stayed at home Saturday, March 24, periodically sampling the television accounts of the massive rallies all over the country and the world against guns, gun violence, and the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists who prey on the celebration of fear and violence. I even shed a tear when I saw one placard with the sign “teach your parents well.”

While I have had bursts of enthusiasm before when women marched for their rights, masses mobilized against war, and many stepped up to say no to police violence and mass incarceration, I was touched emotionally even more this time around. On reflection, I think, my optimism, my interest in being involved, and my sense of purpose has been energized by several features of this new movement.
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Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | Brit detectives solve murders on Caribbean island in ‘Death in Paradise’

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Ben Miller, Kris Marshall, and Ardol O’Hanlon change out as top cops in excellent tropical killer series.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | April 8, 2018

[In his Rag Blog column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland. Most are available on DVD, Netflix and/or Netflix Instant Streaming, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

For the past eight years a nice little murder mystery series, Death in Paradise, has been piling up corpses on a fictional Caribbean island. So far 56 episodes (seven seasons) have unspooled on the exotic French tropical isle of St. Marie, filmed on Guadeloupe. The series began airing in 2011 with Ben Miles as the British chief detective. In Season 4 he was replaced by lanky Kris Marshall and then again in Season 6 by Irish comic Ardal O’Hanlon (playing it straight).
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Alice Embree :
The Census weapon

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

The Electoral College is the smoking gun for a rigged system in presidential politics.

U.S. Census envelope. Screen grab.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | April 7, 2018

See ‘Notes From a Dying Age’
Verse by Alice Embree, Below.

The Trump administration wants to insert a question about citizenship into the 2020 U.S. Census. Since the Census will be the basis for allocating congressional districts, federal funding, and determining votes in the Electoral College, it is no small matter.

A number of state attorneys general are gearing up to challenge this census change. They argue that a question on citizenship will produce an undercount based on the chilling effect, or more bluntly the I.C.E. effect, of an answer that might put you or your family members at jeopardy of deportation.
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