The Rag Blog | The Latest in News and Views from the Progressive Front

Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | ‘Whitechapel’ is a harrowing Brit cop series inspired by notorious historical crimes

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Copycat killers test the mettle of Brit thesps Rupert Penry-Jones, Phil Davis & quirky Steve Pemberton.

From left: Davis, Penry-Jones and Pemberton

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | September 6, 2015

[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.]

Whitechapel is a British TV drama series in which detectives in London’s Whitechapel district in 2008 deal with murders which replicate historical crimes. The first series depicts the search for a modern copycat killer replicating the murders of Jack the Ripper.

Four series of 18 episodes have aired in the U.K. from 2008 to 2013, and Netflix has the first three-episode series. Here, from YouTube, is a two-part episode from Season 4: Part 1 and Part 2.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Alan Waldman, British Television, Criticism, Detective Series, Murder Mysteries, Rag Bloggers, Whitechapel | Leave a comment

Thorne Dreyer :
METRO | Don Quixote’s Bouldin Creek walkabout

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Jim stood blocking the demolition for more than two hours before the police came, cuffed him, and took him to the county jail.

James Retherford is arrested after blocking demolition of house in Bouldin Creek. Photo by Cynthia Bloom / The Rag Blog.

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | September 3, 2015

AUSTIN — The enemy wasn’t quite Megatron (more like “The Claw of Death”), but it was definitely man against massive machine in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood of South Austin when James Retherford faced off against a giant hydraulic excavator in a futile attempt to save a house on Dawson Road he and many of his neighbors believe should have been preserved for its historic value.

Graphic designer and community activist Retherford was taking his neighborhood walkabout on Friday afternoon, August 14, when he came upon the mechanical implement of destruction taking aim at a mid-1920s-era stone house, one of several on the block that were built by local lawyer, engineer, and architect Nicholas Dawson and his two sisters, Mollie and Nannie, who were Austin public education pioneers.
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Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Austin Neighborhoods, Bouldin Creek, Civil Disobedience, Historic Preservation, James Retherford, Metro, Rag Bloggers, Social Action, Thorne Dreyer | 9 Comments

Alice Embree :
BOOKS | ‘Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary’

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Margaret Randall, bringing a poet’s voice to her work, gives human dimensions to the heroes of the Cuban revolution.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | September 1, 2015

Leer este artículo en español

Listen to the Rag Radio podcast of our interview with Margaret Randall. The author, Alice Embree, joins Thorne Dreyer in this interview. This show originally aired Friday, Oct. 2, 2015, 2-3 p.m. (CT), on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Find all podcasts and more about Rag Radio here.

[Haydée Santamarîa, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression by Margaret Randall (August 2015: Duke University Press); Paperback; 248 pp; $23.95; Hardcover; 248 pp; $84.95]

Margaret Randall’s newest book is an homage to Cuban revolutionary Haydée Santamaría. It is the story of a woman with a sixth-grade education raised on a provincial sugar plantation. Haydée defied traditional gender roles as she came of age in the early fifties and participated in every aspect of the Cuban struggle.

She joined her brother, Abel, in Havana, and was there at the time of Fulgencio Batista’s coup. In the apartment Haydee and her brother shared, a group of young insurgents gathered to imagine and plan the overthrow of the dictatorship. The group included Haydée’s fiancé and the bearded lawyer Fidel Castro.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Alice Embree, Books, Casa de las Americas, Che Guevara, Cuba, Cuban Revolution, Haydee Santamaria, Margaret Randall, Rag Bloggers, Venceremos Brigade | 7 Comments

Harry Targ :
Imperialism, war, and/or diplomacy: Where should the peace movement stand on Iran?

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Any foreign policy initiative that reduces the possibility of war, and arguments about its necessity, must be supported.

Secretary of State John Kerry (left) with Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. Photo by Brian Snyder / AFP.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | August 31, 2015

Not every conflict was averted, but the world avoided nuclear catastrophe, and we created the time and the space to win the Cold War without firing a shot at the Soviets. …

Now, when I ran for president eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn’t just have to end that war. We had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy, a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus, a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported.

— Barack Obama, “Full text: Obama gives a speech about the Iran nuclear deal,” The Washington Post, August 5, 2015

The peace movement has often been faced with a dilemma. Should it channel its energies in opposition to imperialism, including economic expansion and covert operations, or should it mobilize against war, or both.

The problem was reflected in President Obama’s August 5, 2015 speech defending the anti-nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran. On the one hand he defended diplomacy as the first tool of a nation’s foreign policy and on the other hand his defense included the argument that through diplomacy the United States “won” the Cold War, and thereby defeated a bloc of states that opposed capitalist expansion.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Harry Targ, Humanitarian Intervention, Iran Nuclear Treaty, Neocons, Nuclear Proliferation, Obama Foreign Policy, Peace Movement, Rag Bloggers, U.S. Imperialism | Leave a comment

Alice Embree :
METRO | Race and police in Austin

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Hundreds of concerned citizens gathered and directed questions about police violence to Mayor Adler and the Austin Police Department.

Video filmed and posted to YouTube by Travis County Democratic Party volunteer Robert Sheldon. This is the first of five parts. Find all of it here.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | August 27, 2015

AUSTIN — On Monday, August 24, 2015, the Travis County Democratic Party (TDCP) hosted a Community Conversation on race and policing in Austin. The event drew hundreds to the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex in East Austin.

It started at 7:32 p.m., the time when Larry Jackson, Jr. died on July 26, 2013. Austin Police Detective Charles Kleinert shot Larry Jackson, Jr., an unarmed African-American, to death. Several members of Larry Jackson, Jr.’s family were present. Adam Loewy, the attorney representing the Larry Jackson, Jr. family, was a panelist.
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Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Alice Embree, Austin, Austin Police Department, Community Policing, Larry Jackson Jr., Metro, Police Violence, Race and Police, Rag Bloggers, Steve Adler, Travis County Democratic Party | 2 Comments

Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Harry Targ, Glenn Smith & Roger Baker, Eve Spangler, Mary Bock, and Jeff Nightbyrd interviews Thorne Dreyer

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

We discuss the worldwide rise of resistance; the bizarre state of politics; Palestine and Zionism; smart phones and citizen journalism — and we turn the tables on the birthday boy.

Old colleagues from the underground press: Jeff Nightbyrd, right, interviews Rag Blog editor/Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer, July 31, 2015, at the KOOP studios in Austin. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | August 26, 2015

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows. The syndicated Rag Radio, 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.

∗ Political Scientist & Peace Activist Harry Targ on the Rise of Resistance Worldwide

Read the show description and download the podcast of our August 21, 2015 Rag Radio interview with Harry Targ here — or listen to it here:

∗ Political Analyst Glenn Smith on the Bizarre State of U.S. Politics, plus The Rag Blog’s Roger Baker

Read the show description and download the podcast of our August 14, 2015 Rag Radio show with Glenn Smith and Roger Baker here — or listen to it here:

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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Eve Spangler, Glenn Smith, Harry Targ, Interviews, Jeffrey Nightbyrd, Mary Bock, Podcasts, Rag Radio, Roger Baker, Thorne Dreyer, Tracey Schulz | Leave a comment

Bill Meacham :
IDEAS | The anti-realist vegetarian

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Once you realize the socially constructed nature of morality, you get to choose whether or not to
buy into it.

Image from Green Talk.

By Bill Meacham | The Rag Blog | August 25, 2015

I venture to guess that most people are moral realists. That is, they think that rules and principles of morality — that stealing and lying are wrong, for instance — actually exist in some form independently of what anybody thinks of them. By contrast moral anti-realists deny the independent reality of moral rules and principles. They say that moral rules are only social conventions. As evidence the anti-realists point to the fact that different cultures have different moral norms.

An extreme example is honor killing.¹ In some cultures it is considered morally obligatory to kill a woman who has brought disgrace to her family by having sex outside of marriage. This is so even if she was raped; she should not have put herself in a situation where that could happen to her. People in most western cultures consider honor killing hideously wrong. But there is no objective way to decide which one it is, right or wrong, obligatory or forbidden.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Bill Meacham, Ideas, Moral Anti-Realism, Moral Realism, Morality, Philosophy, Rag Bloggers, Vegetarianism | 2 Comments

Richard Jehn :
Violence, racism, and fundamentally changing
the United States

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

My specific proposal is to include explicit curriculum in our schools to teach the truth of our past.

Seventy-seven years ago, civil rights activist and poet Langston Hughes wrote his chilling poem “Kids Who Die” to illuminate the horrors of lynchings during the Jim Crow era. Now at the one year mark of Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson uprising that sparked a movement, let us listen to Hughes’ words with new ears. Video from Color of Change.

By Richard Jehn | The Rag Blog | August 24, 2015

When will it be enough? Another horrible tragedy, self-confessed to be an act of terror and white supremacy has occurred. It isn’t a new phenomenon by any means, but we are seeing a more accurate record of these acts because of the available technology so many people now have in hand.

And most observers are appalled to see them, police shooting unarmed black men in the back as they run away[1], a policeman abusing a young black girl at a junior high school pool party[2], and nine murders in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina[3], followed by the burning of six more African American churches across the south, three of which have been unmistakably identified as arson.[4]
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Adolf Hitler, African-American History, American History, American Indians, Civil War, Education, Genocide, Indigenous History, Native Americans, Nazi Germany, Rag Bloggers, Richard Jehn, Slavery, World War II | Leave a comment

Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | Two excellent ‘Wallander’ series come from Sweden and the UK

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Netflix has two crisp, smart (different) cop series from Swedish novelist Henning Mankell, with the Brit version starring the great Kenneth Branagh.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | August 18, 2015

Wallander is a Swedish TV series adapted from Henning Mankell’s Police Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander novels, ably starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. Three seasons of 32 episodes aired from 2005 to 2013, with all of them available on Netflix disks under the title Henrik Mankell’s Wallander. The stories are set in Ystad near the southern tip of Sweden, and they are very twisty and dramatic; I enjoyed them all.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Alan Waldman, British Television, Criticism, Detective Series, Henning Mankell, Kenneth Branagh, Police Procedural, Rag Bloggers, Swedish Television, Wallander | Leave a comment

Alice Embree :
METRO EVENT | Documentary film about ‘The Rag,’ Austin’s pioneering underground newspaper, to screen in September

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Alice Embree

The showing will be followed by an open meeting to start planning a 2016 Rag reunion and celebration.

The Rag‘s first banner, 1966, designed by Clelie Moore.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | August 17, 2015

Event: “The Rag: Austin Underground Press 1966-1977”
What: Film showing and planning for 50th Anniversary Rag Reunion
Date: Saturday, September 12, 2015
Time: 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Where: Fannie Mae Stewart Community Center
Address: 1902 East 22nd Street, Austin, Texas 78722
Donations: Contributions welcome

AUSTIN — There will be a screening of Parts 1 and 2 of a three-part documentary film, The Rag: Austin Underground Press 1966-1977, on Saturday, September 12, 2015, at the Fannie Mae Stewart Community Center in Austin.

The film, about the life and times of Austin’s pioneering underground newspaper, The Rag, is being produced by Peoples History in Texas. It is still a work in progress with a third part now in development. A premiere showing of the full work is scheduled for October 2016, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the first publication of The Rag on October 10, 1966.
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Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Austin History, Documentary Film, Metro, People's History in Texas, Rag Film, Rag Reunion, Rag Reunion 2016, Sixties, The Rag, Underground Press | 3 Comments

Marilyn Katz :
Don’t dunk that cookie!

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

As Nabisco ships 600 jobs out of Chicago to Mexico, maybe it’s time to give up Oreos.

Photo from janetandphil / Flickr. Image from In These Times.

By Marilyn Katz | The Rag Blog | August 11, 2015

CHICAGO — I may have to give up one of my longest-standing indulgences: the dunking of an Oreo cookie in cold milk (whole is preferred). I don’t do this lightly, as I have been dunking those deliciously wicked rounds of chocolate and what I choose to believe is cream since I’ve been three.

Why give them up? Because Irene Rosenfeld, the head of Mondolez (the food conglomerate based in Illinois that has Nabisco in its portfolio), a woman touted for breaking the glass ceiling upon becoming the head of Kraft Foods and then its spin-off, announced that rather than invest $130 million in modernizing the plant in Chicago, where Oreos have been lovingly produced for the past 100 years, she will instead move the jobs to a new factory in Mexico. The result: a loss of 600 well-paying and community-sustaining jobs on Chicago’s Southwest Side.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Chicago, Cities, Marilyn Katz, Nabisco, Offshoring, Oreos Boycott, Rag Bloggers | Leave a comment

David McReynolds :
The Republican debate and the raw ego of
Donald Trump

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

The most glaring problem was how little this group understands the world in which we now live.

Donald Trump shown gesturing at the first Republican Debate. AP photo.

By David McReynolds | The Rag Blog | August 10, 2015

NEW YORK — My assumption is that most of you watched the Fox-sponsored debate between the 10 leading GOP hopefuls. This is not an effort to comment on each of them, but rather a look at what was missed, and, inevitably, an observation about the strange man, Donald Trump, who still holds more than 20% approval in public polls.

Some deal with Trump by noting he is an entertainer, not a politician, which is true, but the man is shrewd enough to deflect every attack by a counterattack. He has never, in all the interviews with him which I have watched, laid out a plan for how to achieve his goals.
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Posted in RagBlog | Tagged 2016 Elections, David McReynolds, Donald Trump, Rag Bloggers, Republican Debate, Republican Party | Leave a comment