Jimmy Lohman :
Trump rallies: The case for silent protest

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

This is not about ‘freedom of speech.’ It is about proper tactics for confronting an enormous evil.

Trump Rally Protest in Chicago sm

Chaos at Trump rally at UIC Pavilion, Chicago, March 11, 2016, after announcement that Donald Trump was postponing his appearance. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

By Jimmy Lohman | The Rag Blog | March 15, 2016

It is a mistake to shout down Trump and disrupt his rallies. Outside the rallies, anything goes: as we used to chant, “The streets belong to the people.” But inside, opposition to the horrific specter of Trumpism is best served by silent protest.

Trump is no longer just a “threat.” He has transformed the political landscape by galvanizing a massive national constituency that thrives on racial hatred, sham phobias, and nationalistic mania. Of course, confronting Trump’s neofascist tidal wave is a moral imperative, but his ascendancy also creates the opportunity for an even greater groundswell for a progressive forward-seeking alternative. The attractiveness of that alternative runs the risk of being undermined by protest actions that alienate the average American or in any way play into the aspiring Fuhrer’s hand.
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The Rag Blog :
METRO EVENT | ‘Living on the Hyphen’

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Alice Embree
Living on the Hyphen

Leng Wong’s Living on the Hyphen will be performed March 31-April 3, 2016, at Austin’s Long Center.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | March 14, 2016

Event: ‘Living on the Hyphen’
Dates: Thursday-Sunday, March 31-April 3, 2016
Times: Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. & 8 p.m
Where: Rollins Studio Theatre, The Long Center
Address: 701 West Riverside Drive, Austin, TX 78704
Admission: $50 premium, $35 general, $25 student/senior

AUSTIN — Living on the Hyphen, a multi-cultural, contemporary collaboration of Austin-based artists of Asian-descent, will take place at the Rollins Studio Theatre, March 31-April 3, 2016, at the Long Center in Austin.

The show, produced by Lucky Chaos Theater and Productions and Austin Dance India, is  directed by Austin’s Leng Wong, who describes the artistic vision this way: “Using the vehicle of humor and various performance art forms, I want to illuminate our commonality of being different.”
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Steve Russell :
The Donald Virus: ‘Who’s Gonna Build
Your Wall?’

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

This shoe was not cobbled to order for Mr. Trump. It just happens to fit his foot.

Who's gonna build your wall youtube grab crp

Screen grab from YouTube.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | March 11, 2016

I think it’s viral when several people who don’t know each other send it to you, right? Viral is understandable. I like the tune and the pictures are well chosen.

The accordion is in the style Mexicans call norteño, and it got my attention. The words sounded like the perfect rebuttal to the fear-mongering I’ve heard in this election season starting with the probable Republican nominee, who called Mexicans “rapists” at his announcement. But look at the date it was uploaded to YouTube. This shoe was not cobbled to order for Mr. Trump. It just happens to fit his foot.
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Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | ‘Cold Squad’ is first-class Canadian procedural with sharp female head

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Vancouver is setting for smart 98 episodes in which hundreds of B.C. baddies get their comeuppance.

Julie Stewart in Cold Squad.

Julie Stewart in Cold Squad.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | March 9, 2016

[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.]

Cold Squad is a sharply written Canadian policier from Matt MacLeod (Rizzoli & Isles), Philip Keatley (The Beachcombers), Julia Keatley, and 22 other clever scribes in which old cases get reexamined and successfully solved. It’s set in crime-infested Vancouver, where other great cop series like Da Vinci’s Inquest and Intelligence are also situated.
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Cecilia Colomé :
¡Bienvenidos al siglo de la astronomía de ondas gravitacionales!

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Cecilia Colome

La detección de LIGO es la medición más precisa jamás realizada en la historia de la humanidad y marca cinco hitos para la física.

El sonido de dos agujeros negros colisionando. Imagen de ligo.caltech.edu.

Por Cecilia Colomé | The Rag Blog | 24 de febrero, 2016

Leer este artículo en inglés

El 11 de febrero, 2016, la National Science Foundation en EE.UU. anunció la detección de ondas gravitacionales por el Observatorio del Interferómetro Láser de Ondas Gravitacionales (LIGO por sus siglas en inglés), un par de observatorios terrestres, uno en Livingston, Luisiana, y el otro en Hanford, Washington.

Fue un evento histórico que ha llevado a los astrónomos a llamar a este “el siglo de la astronomía de ondas gravitacionales.”

La detección de LIGO es la medición más precisa jamás realizada en la historia de la humanidad y marca cinco hitos para la física como la primera detección de:

  • ondas gravitacionales,
  • un agujero negro,
  • un sistema binario de agujeros negros,
  • la fusión de agujeros negros, y
  • un agujero negro girando.

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Michael James :
Parachute opens, sunflowers & stolen bikes, New Age networks, thinking about the champs, 1983

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The big open field suddenly rushed closer and I hit the ground with a grateful, relieved, welcome thump and tumble.

James 28 - 1983 Summer, bike rack, sunflower, HC 2

Bike rack and sunflower at the Heartland Cafe. Photos by Michael James from his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James’ Pictures from the Long Haul.

By Michael James | The Rag Blog | March 2, 2016

[In this series, Michael James is sharing images from his rich past, accompanied by reflections about — and inspired by — those images. These photos will be included in his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James’ Pictures from the Long Haul.]

During the late summer of 1983, I took my first and probably last leap out of an airplane. My friend Kim Cole initiated the adventure; it started with a drive to a small airstrip surrounded by cornfields near Bristol, Wisconsin. We joined a score of others donning white coveralls and paid very close attention to the instructor, Bud, as he introduced us to the details of our pending jumps from a small plane.
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Harry Targ :
Hillary Clinton and the declining
American empire

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The war against the Qaddafi regime that destroyed Libya’s social fabric was enthusiastically endorsed by Secretary of State Clinton.

Hillary Clinton London conf on Libya

Clinton at London meeting to discuss NATO military intervention in Libya, March 29, 2011. Image from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office / Open Government License / Wikimedia Commons.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | March 1, 2016

“I think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of things, there was turmoil to follow.” — Hillary Clinton quoted in Conor Freidersdorf, “Hillary Defends Her Failed War in Libya,” The Atlantic, October 14, 2015

“Nearly three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist.”  — Frederic Wehrey quoted in Conor Friedersdorf

 
Building an empire

In a recent book by distinguished diplomatic historian Lloyd Gardner (Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II, The New Press, 2009), the author describes the last day of the historic Yalta Conference just before the end of World War II in which the leaders of the allied powers met: President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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Ivan Koop Kuper :
METRO | Operation Texas: LBJ’s secret rescue mission on the eve of the Holocaust

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

One Texas scholar insisted that Johnson’s strong spiritual conviction and moral obligation fueled this alleged clandestine undertaking.

Ivan - LBJ at Agudas Achim1 sm

LBJ speaks at Agudas Achim synagogue in Austin, Dec. 30, 1963.

By Ivan Koop Kuper | The Rag Blog | February 24, 2016

HOUSTON — On the evening of December 30, 1963, a little more than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the newly sworn-in 36th President of the United States kept a promise he made to the congregants of a small Jewish Conservative synagogue in Austin, Texas.

At the personal request of his good friend Jim Novy, a political ally and a central Texas Democratic Party fundraiser, Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed the members of Congregation Agudas Achim at a dinner dedicating their new sanctuary, then located on Bull Creek Road. The dedication was originally scheduled for the evening of November 24, but the events that transpired two days before in Dallas, beginning with a motorcade through Dealey Plaza, prevented Johnson from fulfilling his original promise.
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Cecilia Colomé :
Welcome to the century of gravitational
wave astronomy!

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

LIGOS’ detection is the most precise measurement ever made in human history and marks five milestones for physics.

The sound of two black holes colliding. Image from ligo.caltech.edu.

By Cecilia Colomé | The Rag Blog | February 24, 2016

Leer este artículo en español

On February 11, 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of ground-based observatories, one in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other in Hanford, Washington.

It was a landmark historic event which is leading astronomers to call this “the century of gravitational wave astronomy.”

LIGOS’ detection is the most precise measurement ever made in human history and marks five milestones for physics as the first direct detection of:

  • gravitational waves,
  • a black hole,
  • a binary system of black holes,
  • the merger of black holes, and
  • a spinning black hole.

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Ken Wachsberger :
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 60’s underground press, Part III: The ‘countercultural’ underground papers

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The underground press was everywhere you looked: on campus and off, in urban, suburban, rural, ghetto, barrio, in every state of the Union.

joint issue double

The author, Ken Wachsberger, worked with Joint Issue in Lansing, Michigan.

By Ken Wachsberger | The Rag Blog | February 23, 2016

[This is the third of a three-part series written for The Rag Blog by underground press historian Ken Wachsberger. Part I was about the 50th reunion of the Berkeley Barb and Part II  featured a similar event honoring Detroit’s Fifth Estate.]

What was the countercultural underground press?

In the first two parts of this series I have referred to the “countercultural” underground press as opposed to just the more commonly known “underground press.” The term isn’t meant to disparage the storyline that begins with Art Kunkin founding the Los Angeles Free Press in 1964, followed by the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and the Fifth Estate in 1965; The Rag, the San Francisco Oracle, Illustrated Paper, and Underground Press Syndicate in 1966; and then the explosion.
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Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Political Guru Glenn W. Smith, Environmentalist & Poet Taylor Brorby, Texas State Rep. Elliott Naishtat

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Smith tries to decipher the weird world of presidential politics; Brorby discusses his book on the literature of fracking; Naishtat, a Texas progressive icon, talks about his exit from politics.

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Glenn W. Smith on Rag Radio Friday, February 19, 2016. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | February 24, 2016

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows. 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 Weird World of Presidential Politics with Political Guru Glenn W. Smith

Glenn Smith Rag Radio 2-19-16 4 crpTrump vs. the Pope. Bernie vs. Hillary. The Republicans vs. Sanity! Progress Texas PAC director and Rag Radio political analyst Glenn W. Smith joins Thorne Dreyer in a discussion of — YES! — the weird world of presidential politics. Glenn Smith writes a weekly column for Quorum Report, is a former political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post, and managed Ann Richards’ winning Texas gubernatorial campaign.

Read the full show description and download the podcast of our February 19, 2016 Rag Radio interview with Glenn Smith, here — or listen to it here:


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Steve Russell :
METRO | Scalia Files: The truth is out there

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Too bad Agatha Christie was not a fellow guest, because there has to be foul play.

Tin Foil Hat

The truth is out there. Photo by Suzanne Tucker / shutterstock.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | February 21, 2016

AUSTIN — An obese 79-year-old man in a sedentary occupation goes to bed early because, he says, he is not feeling well. The next morning, he does not show up for breakfast and, after giving him a reasonable amount of time, the proprietor of the luxury resort enters and finds his guest deceased.

Too bad Agatha Christie was not a fellow guest, because there has to be foul play. The deceased was Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, darling of the political right and probably the best writer among the nine justices in terms of reaching non-lawyers.
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