Jack A. Smith :
A left solution to climate change

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Climate deniers in Congress, exasperating as they are, constitute the farcical sideshow of a much bigger economic and political three-ring circus known as U.S.A. Inc.

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System change, not climate change. Image from BostonSocialism.org.

By Jack A. Smith | The Rag Blog | June 8, 2014

Climate change is occurring with extreme rapidity. Recent news headlines warn us: “Earth Could Warm 11 Degrees by 2100,” “Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Collapsing,” and “Climate Change Risks Security and Wars” — and this is just the beginning.

Had extreme measures been inaugurated worldwide 20 years ago to sharply curtail reliance on fossil fuels, much of what we are now experiencing — unwelcome temperature change, dangerous storms, droughts, floods, etc. — would have been minimized. But to this day Washington is among the tiny minority of countries that have refused to ratify the basic UN document on climate change, the Kyoto Protocol.
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Posted on June 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
growth monster
METRO | Roger Baker reports on “The rise and rise of Austin, Texas” – the suburban explosion & the ever-so-tenuous tech bubble.
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Harry Targ :
Obama’s ‘glass is half-empty’ foreign policy

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

It is the non-military parts of the Obama speech that peace activists should mobilize around, weak as they are.

US President Barack Obama throws out the

President Obama: Pitching his foreign policy? Image from RealClearPolitics.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | June 8, 2014

President Obama has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech — Washington Post editorial, May 28, 2014.

President Obama gave what was framed as a major foreign policy address to a West Point graduating class on Wednesday, May 28, 2014. Many peace activists hoped for a forthright statement on the limits of U.S. power and expressions of humility about the correct role of the country in the world. They should be sorely disappointed.
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Terry Dyke :
The steel hatchet and culturecide

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

A fable for the unintended consequences of technological diffusion and the many-layered banality of cultural domination.

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Cape York rock art. Images from Midnight Oil.

By Terry Dyke | The Rag Blog | June 6, 2014

One of my favorite nuggets from an unapologetically liberal arts education turned up in a class in cultural anthropology, which also happened to be my major — one I stuck with even after learning that job prospects in the field were pretty much nil outside of academia and the CIA.

This particular story was even better than the ever-useful “50 words for snow” trope introduced the previous semester. Indeed, it serves as a fable for the unintended consequences of technological diffusion and the many-layered banality of cultural domination.
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Thorne Dreyer :
PODCAST | Historian, activist & pioneering feminist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on Rag Radio

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Dunbar-Ortiz wrote the classic ‘Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975,’ recently released in an updated edition.

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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, May 30, 2014. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | June 6, 2014

Our Rag Radio podcast features Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a scholar and memoirist, and a ’60s-’70s activist who played a pioneering role in the early women’s liberation movement.

Listen to or download the podcast of our May 30, 2014, Rag Radio interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz here:

Rag Radio is a weekly hour-long syndicated radio program produced and hosted by long-time alternative journalist and Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer. The show is recorded at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas. It is broadcast live on KOOP every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) and streamed live on the web.
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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | A ‘Bohemian’ comic rhapsody

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Paul Buhle and David Berger’s graphic history is a fascinating collection of personalities, their lives drawn in a manner equal to the stories they tell.

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Bohemians: A Graphic History was edited by Paul Buhle and David Berger.

By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | June 5, 2014

[Bohemians: A Graphic History edited by Paul Buhle and David Berger (2014: Verso); Paperback; 304 pp.; $16.95.]

Bohemians: A Graphic History is an ideal medium for the history it presents. There is a growing understanding that comics are one of the few art forms considered purely American in origin. Arguably, the other four are the mystery novel, the banjo, jazz, and the musical comedy. I might throw bluegrass music into the mix, but the focus of this review is comics.

The collection of comics appearing in Bohemians is a broad reaching display of the varieties of the art form and the contributors include many new cartoonists along with some well-known artists who began drawing during the 1960s and 1970s underground comics renaissance. Though most is freestyle in form, the artwork in other stories is more linear in form, even using typeset for the word balloons.
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Posted on June 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
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METRO PODCAST | ‘Queen of Austin Weird!’ Thorne Dreyer’s Rag Radio interview with performance artist Aralyn Hughes, editor of ‘Kid Me Not.’
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Tom Hayden :
The negotiated release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Public opinion supports Bergdahl but Republicans and neocons are grumbling about his anti-war statements and rumors that he went AWOL.

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Still from a video released by the Taliban of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, held captive since 2009. Image from TomHayden.com.

By Tom Hayden | The Rag Blog | June 5, 2014

After the negotiated release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, I called an old friend who spent years as a POW in Vietnam’s prison camps to ask for his response. Preferring to keep his name out of the papers for the moment, he was following the situation closely. In summary though, here’s what he said:

First, the Pentagon will debrief Bergdahl for as long as two weeks, eight hours per day, assuming they follow protocols used in Vietnam.
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Jonah Raskin :
INTERVIEW | Howard Machtinger on the old-yet-never-forgotten American War in Vietnam

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Anti-war activist Howie Machtinger, veteran of SDS and the Weather Underground,  believes we should get the facts straight about Vietnam.

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Howie Machtinger, 1969.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | June 5, 2014

Vietnam was near the heart of Howard Machtinger’s life from about 1965, when he was a 19-year-old student, to 1975, when the war ended and weary American troops came home. Vietnam is near the heart of his life once again.

In those days, he belonged to SDS and later to Weatherman and the Weather Underground. These days, he’s a member of Veterans for Peace, the organization that has launched a campaign that demands “Full Disclosure” and “An Honest Commemoration of the American War in Vietnam.”
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METRO | Roger Baker : The rise and rise of Austin, Texas

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Suburbs experience growth explosion while Austin’s tech bubble could be the next to explode.

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Austin Growth Monster? Image from Nickelodeon.

By Roger Baker | The Rag Blog | June 3, 2014

AUSTIN — According to Forbes, as reported by KVUE-TV, Austin is the fastest growing city in the country.

According to city of Austin demographer Ryan Robinson, approximately 110 new people move here every day. That’s a net number, including those moving in and moving out. “About 150 come in and 40 leave,” Robinson told KVUE. That number includes all five counties in the greater metropolitan area: Williamson, Travis, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell.

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Kate Braun :
BOOKS | Mariann Garner-Wizard’s informative and timely ‘Hempseed Food’

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

This book is chock-full of recipes and useful information that will fascinate readers who care deeply about what they eat, how it is prepared, and what nutrients it contains.

hempseed food

Mariann Garner-Wizard’s Hempseed Food.

By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | June 3, 2014

[Hempseed Food: The REAL Secret Ingredient for Health & Happiness by Mariann Garner-Wizard; illustrated by Charlie Loving (2013: Lulu.com); Paperback; 90 pp.; $15.]

When Rag Blog regular Mariann Garner-Wizard decided in 1995 to write a book about cooking with hempseed, the seed of the Cannabis sativa plant, she thought it would be a quick, easy project. A longtime cannabis activist, she saw hempseed foods then just as she saw other products that could be made from the banned “marijuana” plant: fibers for paper, fabric, and building materials; oil and biomass for fuels; and valuable medicines for cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, neuropathy, and other disease sufferers.
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METRO EVENT | Dude. It’s Hemp History Week!

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Hemp History Week, June 3-9, 2014, promotes the re-legalization of industrial hemp in the U.S.

hemp history weekAUSTIN — Every day, more and more Americans discover the environmental and health-related benefits of hemp (Cannabis sativa). Hemp products now include foods, body care products, textiles, paper goods, clothing, auto parts, building materials, and more.

But despite hemp’s growing popularity, the outdated, misguided federal policy of cannabis prohibition still prevents U.S. farmers from growing this versatile, valuable crop. The prohibition of hemp, the non-psychoactive sister plant of “marijuana,” may in fact have been the real reason the war against marijuana was launched in the 1930s by industrialists who feared hemp’s potential.
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