Pottery Barn: “You break it, you own it.” Photo by Sajjad Hussain / AFP / Getty Images.
The talks over Syria have gone nowhere and the radical Sunnis have spilled across the Iraqi border to threaten Baghdad. So the chorus rises again:
“Obama is a wuss!”
“Something must be done!”
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Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning star in Night Moves.
Kelly Reichardt’s 2013 movie, Night Moves — now in theaters across the country — seems to be two movies in one. The first part might be called a how-to picture. The second part is a searing moral melodrama.
The main characters are ecoterrorists. They live in rural Oregon in what appears to be the present day. While there are almost no events that might locate the movie in time and provide an historical reference point, the characters talk on cell phones. Josh grows organic vegetables on a small local farm. Dena works at a spa where women come to relax and heal and where a grotesque and horrible crime occurs. I don’t want to give it away.
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Suzanna Danuta Walters.
Our Rag Radio podcast features Suzanna Danuta Walters, author of The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality.
Listen to or download the podcast of our June 20, 2014, Rag Radio interview with Suzanna Walters here:
Painting by Anthony Freda / AnthonyFreda.com.
Sometimes you might have cause to wonder, but the Democratic Party is indeed better than the Republican Party. That says almost nothing. The economic policies of contemporary Republicans are more right wing than those of Benito Mussolini, the founder of modern fascism. Being better than Mussolini is no great distinction.
During the “Obama recovery” since 2009, 95% of all income gains have gone to the top 1% economic elite, the capitalist ruling class. As their income rose 31%, the other 99% saw their income grow by a meager 0.4%. In the process, inequality increased rapidly. Such are the riches Obama’s economic policies have delivered.
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Historian Gabriel Kolko, September 1970. Photo by Franz Maier / The Globe and Mail.
I have been teaching courses on United States foreign policy since 1966. I came of age politically during the Vietnam War and the modern civil rights movement but was not born into a left-leaning political environment.
My formative college experiences of foreign policy came from articulate professors who had embraced the skeptical but limited vision of the United States role in the world shaped by the theorists of “political realism.” I was exposed to a later edition of Hans Morgenthau’s classic international relations textbook, Politics Among Nations, which declared that politics was about the struggle for power. Big or small nations, powerful or weak political actors of all kinds, were engaged in the pursuit of power for purposes of material gain or just to achieve more power.
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Demonstration Saturday, June 21, outside the White House. Photo from AP.
Contrary to the original spin, there seems to be no need or rationale for “saving” Baghdad from invading ISIS hordes. As I predicted, the growing Shiite counteroffensive seems to be a sufficient deterrent. It appears that al-Maliki will be forced out politically, perhaps to be replaced by a new Humpty-Dumpty and a patchwork agreement to “reform” the Shiite regime.
The imminent danger is that Obama is preparing to go to war not to “save Baghdad” but to attack the perceived threat of a Sunni jihadist “sanctuary” in the vast zone from southern Syria into northern Iraq. It has been U.S. policy, however, that is partly responsible for fostering the terrorist sanctuary threat, if one actually transpires.
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Eqyptians walk past banner showing Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in downtown Cairo, March 13, 2014. Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters. Image from Al-Monitor.
[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman’s Rag Blog “people’s history” series, “The Movement to Democratize Egypt,” which concludes here, could not have been more timely. Also see Feldman’s “Hidden History of Texas” series on The Rag Blog.]
According to a December 28, 2013 press release of Human Rights Watch, between July and December 2013 Egyptian government authorities “killed more than 1,000 pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters; arrested thousands of its supporters, including the majority of its leadership; and engaged in a systematic media campaign to demonize the group” and “a Cairo court in September [2013}” then “found the Brotherhood to be an illegal organization.”
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Exile is a British psychological thriller.
[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, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]
Exile is a terrific British psychological thriller TV series dealing with the topic of Alzheimer’s disease against a background of vile corruption. This gripping 2011 three-hour, three-part drama is available on Netflix and Netflix Instant streaming, and here too.
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President Barack Obama deliverers commencement address at West Point on May 28. Image from U.S. News.
President Obama chose to ignore the most important strategic aspect of U.S. foreign policy in his major address May 28 at West Point graduation ceremonies. It was perhaps thought politically wise to emphasize current events rather than military preparations for a possible major future confrontation with China.
Instead Obama mainly focused on defending his policies against mounting criticism from warhawks in both parties variously demanding that the U.S. attack Syria, or Iran, or Venezuela, and adopt more provocative measures toward Russia. He was even criticized for not being tougher toward China, which is preposterous, as we shall discuss in this article when deeds, not words, are examined.
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Grassroots Leadership is challenging Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton deportation policies.
AUSTIN — Grassroots Leadership says that Texas is “ground zero” with “more incarcerated people, immigration detention beds, and for-profit prisons than any other state.” That is why the national organization, founded in 1980 by activist and musician Si Kahn, moved its program operations to Austin in 2012.
I spoke with Executive Director Bob Libal about Grassroots Leadership and the group’s current organizing efforts in Travis County, Texas, and nationally. They have a solid track record of success. They helped shut down the notoriously bad Dawson State Jail, end the immigrant family detention at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center, and stop the expansion of the private prison industry. They also have an ambitious agenda for the future.
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Political cartoon by Patrick Chapatte / International New York Times. Image from The English Blog.
Former CIA director Michael Hayden says Iraq is dead, “will not be reconstituted,” and will be replaced by three “successor states.” One of those, which Gen. Hayden calls “Sunnistan,” will become a safe haven for terrorists and should be treated like Waziristan, a zone of secret operations and drone strikes in the tribal regions of Pakistan.
The second, called “Shiastan,” should be shored up by recapturing the oil refinery north of Baghdad, and left in a sharply reduced space. The U.S. should “snuggle up comfortable” to Kurdistan, America’s only ally, where the pesh merga forces are competing for full control of the oil in Kirkuk.
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Pacifica Radio at war.
HOUSTON — Once again the radio network for peace, Pacifica Foundation Radio, is at war. Plagued with lawsuits and unpaid bills, the enemy is “within” as factions line up to sell prime real estate on the Houston, New York, and Washington D.C., FM dials.
Pacifica has been called the “most powerful community radio network in America, and the only one devoted to an anti-establishment point of view.” Founded in 1949, it is a network of five politically progressive, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations — KPFK (Los Angeles), KPFA (San Francisco), WBAI (New York), WPFW (Washington, D.C.), and KPFT in Houston.
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Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
