“Clouds of Doomsday” by Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería / Flickr.
Well, we appear to have survived the historic solar eclipse.
And it also appears that the potential nuclear crisis with North Korea may have abated for now. Donald Trump’s and Kim Jong-Un’s saber-rattling and sword fight over who has the largest, ah, missile seems to have come to a draw.
And we are weathering Hurricane Harvey.
Continue reading
Harris County Juvenile Justice Center.
I graduated from law school over 41 years ago and am now retired. I’ve known of many disreputable, if not corrupt, occurrences in the legal system, but few worse than what happened in 1976, before I was admitted to the practice of law by the State Bar of Texas, when I was in my third year of law school and allowed to practice in court under the direct supervision of an attorney.
Professor Irene Merker Rosenberg had been an extraordinary lawyer and supervising attorney for the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society of New York for seven years before joining the faculty at the University of Houston law school in 1974. She had been the trial attorney in the landmark Winship decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that juveniles accused of a crime are entitled to have the charge proven “beyond a reasonable doubt,” rather than by the lower standard of proof, “by a preponderance of the evidence.”
Continue reading
[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.]
In Orange is the New Black, Yael Stone was very convincing as whiny-voiced, Italian-American prison van-driving inmate Lorna Morello, but in the outstanding 2016 Australian police drama Deep Water, it is shocking to hear her return to her normal accent from Down Under. Stone is actually an Aussie, the granddaughter of Czech Jewish holocaust survivors.
Continue reading
Photo posted by the Bexar County Greens in a notice of memorial services for Paul Pipkin.
SAN IGNACIO, Cavo, Belize — There was a notorious news photo from a scorching hot Tuesday in Austin, Texas, July 1967. I’m wearing a plain white dress my mom made for me a couple of years earlier for my high school graduation festivities. I’m staring at nothing, straight ahead, utterly blank, focused on my mother-in-law’s innate dignity as I leave the funeral home to get into the limo that will carry us to the cemetery in San Antonio to bury my murdered husband.
To my left, not in the picture, a swarm of news photographers, including the Department of Public Safety’s well-known surveillance shutterman, is calling me, trying to get me to look at them, asking the questions idiots always ask survivors, like “How do you feel?” I don’t hear them and I don’t see them. Between me and the news mob, a madman, with huge, angry eyes, a bristling black beard, and a snarling, teeth-gnashing grimace, lunges at the intruders, keeping them away. That was my friend, Paul.
Continue reading
This Afghan farmer boy was murdered in 2010 by a group of U.S. Army soldiers called the Kill Team. Photo originally appeared in Der Spiegel. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve just finished listening to Trump’s speech on Afghanistan. While generally I have been hostile to Trump’s policies, this is one time when I think he was right the first time — when, during the campaign, he pledged to get out of Afghanistan.
In his speech he took ownership of the Afghan War — the longest in U.S. history, and one of the most tragically pointless. He pledged to take the bonds off the military — to let the war be fought without limits. What that means, when translated, is that civilian casualties will increase (as has already happened) as the military feels fewer restraints. And what that also means is that one of the things which produces terrorists — the killing of civilians — is back in play.
Continue reading
Vladimir Putin. Caricature by DonkeyHotey.
In his recent opinion piece in Bloomberg, a publication dedicated to inculcating the pro-capitalist mentality, Jonathan Bernstein blandly asserts that Russia is “a nation basically hostile to the United States.” Here he is stating a cornerstone foundational concept of the American imperialist narrative, a concept which stands reality on its head.
One must ask, do these belligerent and hostile Russians ring our borders with guided missiles? Do they station their troops among our neighbors and promote self-serving subversion of their governments? Do they patrol our shores with naval battle groups? Do they form alliances against us? And did Russia subvert our 1996 presidential election to get an alcoholic pawn of Russian financiers in office?
Continue reading
Image from HuffPost.
Democratic legislators have been busy lately fighting efforts by President Trump and Republican legislators to bulldoze millions of Americans out of health care, overturn the rule of law, and trample foreign policy.
So it might be little wonder that few congressmen — even liberals like Joe Kennedy, Claire McCaskill, or would-be presidential nominee Kirsten Gillibrand — took the time to read the details of S720 and HR 1697, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, when presented to them by Senators Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer, and Peter Roskam as legislation that would simply protect Israel from the impact of a growing world-wide Boycott, Sanction and Divestment (BDS) movement.
Continue reading
Reviewer Steve Early and author Nick Licata will talk about “Rebel Cities in the era of Trump” as Thorne Dreyer‘s guests on Rag Radio, Friday, July 28, 2-3 p.m. (CT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live here.
Steve Early and Nick Licata will also be featured at “A Tale of Two Rebel Cities,” a book party and discussion at Scholz Biergarten in Austin on Thursday, July 27, 7-9 p.m. For more information, go here.
[Becoming a Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies & Advice for Changing Our World by Nick Licata (January 5, 2016: Sasquatch Books; Hardcover; 224 pp.]
As the 2016 political season drew to an end, hundreds, if not thousands, who had been “feeling the Bern” started turning their eye to local politics.
Many would heed the call of Minnesota Congressman and Sanders supporter Keith Ellison:
Continue reading
Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer with Suzy Shelor of Queer Rights ATX in the KOOP studios, July 8, 2017. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.
The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows with host 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.
Jack A. Smith died of complications of COPD in New Paltz, New York, on June 29, 2017. On Friday, July 21, we reprised our August 3, 2012 exclusive interview with Smith. Jack, our longtime friend and colleague, was one of the most important figures in progressive journalism in the 20th century. In his early life a radical pacifist who spent nine months in federal prison for refusing induction, Jack Smith edited The Guardian in the 1960s-1980s. The Guardian was the largest circulation independent left-wing paper in the United States. In his later years, Smith lived in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, where he remained politically active, organizing demonstrations and publishing the monthly Hudson Valley Activist. Newsletter which had a circulation in the thousands.
Continue reading
American Bird of Prey by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.
TRUE HOMELAND
Why is this sweet world we live in
so torn between chaos and Zen
with extremes at either end
like enemies and lifelong friends
starvation and stock dividends
a young child’s death yet love transcends
are we really blowing in these winds
with not that much on which to depend
can we compromise in a scale of ten
must our safe place be a lion’s den
and our safe word something to defend
must we wait around for the worst to begin
if peace breaks out don’t we all win
there’s a lot to learn if we don’t pretend
that chaos comes from some original sin
what starts the wars again and again
who stands to gain from this which men
they must not care we all are kin
nor care about the shape we’re in
Continue reading
Australian-New Zealand TV series 800 Words is a hit
with all demos.
[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.]
Last year PBS stations ran the first eight-episode season of the top-watched Australian-New Zealand TV series 800 Words; the second season has aired down there and a third season has been ordered. At imdb.com more than 91.3% of 601 viewers gave it thumbs up and 25.1% rated it a perfect 10.
Continue reading
In the face of Trump’s clown car, Cold War rationales may no longer hold NATO together. Cartoon by Carlos3653 / Wikimedia Commons.
PARIS — NATO died recently. Over the past few months, its decline was rapid. Its death has yet to be reported in corporate media. It died because, as principally a vehicle for U.S. imperialism, it required U.S. leadership.
Once that fell into the hands of a cabal of incompetents, no NATO country was any longer willing to follow this capitalist class clown car into future military adventures to protect the profits of fossil energy tycoons.
Continue reading
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
