Jean Trounstine :
A moment of restorative justice

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

While the U.S.criminal justice system offers revenge as its principal method of restitution, families may find better solutions for achieving remorse and
true rehabilitation.

hands on bars

Image courtesy of National Justice News.

By Jean Trounstine | The Rag Blog | September 9, 2014

It never happens. That’s what the chairman of the Massachusetts Parole Board said on August 26, at the parole hearing for lifer Keyma Mack when families of both the victim and the murderer reached out to each other with sobs of remorse and vows of forgiveness. Mothers, fathers, cousins, siblings — all were refusing to be bound by shame and hatred.

For those of us who witnessed this, it was a moment of grace and an example of why restorative justice was created.

Keyma Mack, who shot Christopher Pires in 1992, was the fourth juvenile in Massachusetts to be eligible for parole and to have his hearing before the seven-member Board. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision, Miller v. Alabama, that enabled this historical moment.
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Posted on September 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
lamar hankins 2
Friday on Rag Radio: Lamar Hankins discusses the chilling Church of Wells scandal and the Rick Perry indictment.

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Murray Polner :
The Ukrainian mess: Where are the skeptics?

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

is this another replay of the Vietnam and Iraq eras when our mass media merely echoed government spokespeople?

no fascism

Anti-government poster at a rally on Freedom Square in Kharkiv, April 2014. Image from Creative Commons.

By Murray Polner | The Rag Blog | September 9, 2014

Poor Katrina van den Heuvel and husband Stephen Cohen, she the editor of The Nation and he a scholar of Russian history and the author of a definitive biography of Nikolai Bukharin, who was executed during Stalin’s mad blood purges, and more recently, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: Stalinism and the New Cold War.

Almost 25 years after the collapse of the USSR, they wrote, “The White House declared a new Cold War on Russia — and that, in a grave failure of representative democracy, there was scarcely a public word of debate, much less opposition, from the American political or media establishment” — not to mention the craven silence of our usually voluble pro-peace groups and liberal Democrats.
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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | Mr. Kurtz comes to America

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

In the spirit of Joseph Conrad, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s ‘Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States’ illuminates the genocidal destruction of the indigenous peoples of North America.

indigenous peoples history

An Indigenous Peoples’ History: Writing from the dark side.

By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | September 8, 2014

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz will make appearances in Austin at BookPeople on Monday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m.; at the Julius Glickman Conference Center, UT-Austin, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 3:30-5:30 p.m.; and at Resistencia Bookstore, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 7:30 p.m. For more information go here.

[An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014: Beacon Press); Hardcover; 296 pp; $27.95.]

Joseph Conrad is responsible for some of the best writing on imperialism’s darker side in the English language. The jungles of Marlowe and Kurtz in his classic novel Heart of Darkness remain some of literature’s ugliest manifestations of European hubris and white racism ever written.
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Thorne Dreyer :
PODCAST | Former NFL star David Meggyesy wrote the classic memoir, ‘Out of Their League’

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Meggyesy speaks out on the uber-violent ‘military culture’ of pro football. And he calls new UT coach Charlie Strong’s ‘hard-ass’ approach ‘insane.’

dave meggysey

David Meggyesy. Photo by Julia Moore / Mail Tribune.

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | September 8, 2014

David Meggyesy, author of the classic football memoir, Out of Their League, is our guest on Rag Radio.

We talk about why he quit the NFL in 1969 at the peak of his career; his 25 years working with the players’ union and his role in bringing free agency to the NFL;  the “war games” nature and extreme violence of today’s football, including head injuries and brain damage, as well as domestic violence, bullying, and related issues; and the O’Bannon class action suit over rights for college athletes.

And why he thinks new Texas football coach Charlie Strong is “blowing it” with his strict disciplinarian approach to coaching.
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Moira Herbst :
THEATER | Brechtomania!

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Why Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht is theater’s hottest old name

threepenny opera pic

Actors F. Murray Abraham, left, and Mary Beth Peil on opening night of Bertolt Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera in New York in April 2014. Photo by Monica Schipper / Getty Images.

By Moira Herbst | Portside | September 7, 2014

The playwright, theorist and poet Bertolt Brecht is known worldwide as a giant of modern theater. But until recently, few theaters — especially in the U.S. — have been staging his plays. Production companies haven’t seen much of a market for the Marxist playwright’s overtly political style and have generally stuck with more familiar, accessible works.

That’s starting to change. Since last year, Brecht suddenly seems to be everywhere. In New York alone, we’ve seen productions of The Good Person of Szechuan (originally translated as The Good Woman of Szechuan), A Man’s a Man, and The Threepenny Opera, which has also been performed in Long Beach, California, Washington, D.C., and Yorkshire, England.
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Harry Targ :
Lies and war!

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

U.S. administrations ever since Truman have justified aggressive foreign policies by lying and distorting the realities behind complex international relationships.

truman doctrine speech

Harry Truman delivers his Truman Doctrine speech before a joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947. Image from American Rhetoric.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | September 4, 2014

Post-modernists talk about “discourses,” “narratives,” “tropes,” and verbal “deconstructions.” They should be commended for suggesting how words are used to mobilize, inspire, deceive, promote self-interest, and, too often, justify killing everywhere.

Former Arkansas Senator, J. William Fulbright in describing how he was tricked by his old friend President Lyndon Baines Johnson to support a resolution authorizing escalating war in Vietnam said: “A lie is a lie. There is no other way to put it.”
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Marilyn Katz :
It’s time to speak out for Gaza

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Why have American politicians and editorial boards been silent in the face of extreme violence?

israeli peace rally

10,000 rally for peace in Tel Aviv, August 16, 2014. Image from Counter Current News.

By Marilyn Katz | The Rag Blog | September 3, 2014

The latest seven-week war in Gaza is over. More than 2,000 people are dead — most of them civilians, 500 of them children. At least 10,000 people have been injured, and 500,000 are homeless. Yet there have been few words of criticism from our nation’s editorial boards or political leadership for these reprehensible, tragic events.

What has happened to us? Where is our sense of outrage at the deaths of thousands of innocents that we show when a single American, 200 airline passengers, or three Israeli youths are killed?
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Shepherd Bliss :
Neighbors come together to build the village

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Small-town Sebastopol, California, sets 10-day festival to ‘shape common spaces in a way that promotes beauty and community.’

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Shaping the commons in Portland during Village Building Convergence. Image from Transition United States.

By Shepherd Bliss  | The Rag Blog | September 3, 2014

SEBASTOPOL, California — Village Building Convergence (VBC) activists and their supporters from Cittaslow Sebastopol, Transition, the Grange, Permaculture Skills Center, and other groups recently packed the City Council meeting of small town Sebastopol in semi-rural Sonoma County, northern California. Testimony in support of VBC came from enthusiastic advocates from three-year-olds to 70-somethings.

The Village Building Convergence is “an annual collaboration and cross-pollination of neighbors, groups and civic partnerships” that involves citizens “coming together to shape their common spaces” with projects that “may take the shape of benches on corners, street painting projects, sharing kiosks, natural building projects and a multitude of other ways to inspire neighbors to gather in public spaces.”
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METRO PODCAST | Thorne Dreyer : Broadus Spivey & Jesse Sublett hold forth on ‘Homer Maxey’s Texas Bank War’

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Rag Radio features the literary odd couple of lawyer Spivey and musician-writer Sublett and their true tale of West Texas legal chicanery, ‘Broke Not Broken.’

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Broadus Spivey, left, and Jesse Sublett on Rag Radio at the KOOP studios in Austin, Texas, August 22, 2014. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | September 2, 2014

Joining us on Rag Radio are the literary odd couple — prominent attorney Broadus Spivey and musician and crime novelist Jesse Sublett — who together researched and penned Broke Not Broken: Homer Maxey’s Texas Bank War, the remarkable story of the record-breaking, precedent-setting legal battle between rancher Homer Maxey and the Citizens National Bank of Lubbock.

Broke Not Broken delivers what one reviewer calls “a tale of Giant-like proportions” and which, according to the Austin American-Statesman, includes “elements of sabotage, skullduggery, conflict of interest and judicial misconduct.” Not to mention “avaricious connivers,” turn-coat attorneys, courtroom theatrics, and even a dash of sexual intrigue.

Download the podcast of our August 22, 2014 Rag Radio interview with Broadus Spivey and Jesse Sublett here — or listen to it here:


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Alan Waldman :
Britain’s ‘Bad Girls’ is a gripping, gritty gals-behind-bars series

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Strong English cast and writers make this popular prison series compelling television.

bad girls 2

Bad Girls. Lots of them.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | September 1, 2014

[In his weekly 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 and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

I am very interested in the topic of female incarceration, and I write a blog article about it every third week at Humane Exposures. I loved both seasons of Netflix’s powerful women-in-prison drama Orange is the New Black, and a dozen or so years ago I watched and enjoyed the first riveting season of the dramatic British TV series, Bad Girls. Here’s the first part of an episode (and from it you can access the remaining parts).
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METRO | Steve Russell : Voting for change

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

I guess my attitude towards elections could be taken as evidence that my purity has been compromised. Maybe the old cat has been belled.

belled cat

Judge Russell: Old belled cat? Photo by Ian Jones / The Telegraph.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | August 27, 2014

“Would you rather vote for what you want and not get it or vote for what you don’t want and get it?” — Ralph Nader

“In the end, the American dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay. Our families don’t always cross the finish line in the span of one generation. But each generation passes on to the next the fruits of their labor.” — Julian Castro

[This essay by Judge Russell was inspired by and serves as a comradely rejoinder to Austin movement attorney Jim Simons’ recent Rag Blog article, “The 50-year lawyer: Defying the systems of power.”]

AUSTIN — I suppose there’s some biology behind the fact that, at my age, Mr. Castro makes a lot more sense than Mr. Nader. There comes a time when you know you’re not going to get there…but that’s not exactly my case.
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