Alan Waldman :
‘Rake’ is an outrageous, bawdy, Australian legal thriller-comedy

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Richard Roxborough is a seriously flawed barrister who represents criminals accused of ridiculous crimes, ranging from cannibalism to cutting off a neighbor’s weenie with garden shears.

rake

Rake is an audacious Australian legal comedy-drama.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | June 10, 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 and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

Rake is a very clever and audacious Australian legal comedy-drama that ran for four seasons (2010-2014) Down Under. The first two seasons (16 episodes) are available on Netflix Instant streaming, including this one.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chellis Glendinning :
Celebrating the ‘Grito de Libertad’ in Bolivia

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Joining in the patriotic frenzy with Evo Morales, goose-stepping soldiers, lots of white paint… and, oh yes, the marching bands…

goose-steppin

Police marching band does a little goose-stepping on Independence Day in Sucre. Photo from La Razon.

By Chellis Glendinning | The Rag Blog | June 8, 2014

SUCRE, Bolivia — Independence Day in Sucre was the most electrifying day in the Andes since Cochabamba doctors — armed with rocks and in full white-coat-stethoscope regalia — hurled themselves into street battle against the police and the police hurled their computers into bonfires and burned down their own stations.

Preparation for the grand event celebrating the Grito de Libertad began weeks in advance when workers of this White City set up scaffolding for the annual re-whitening of the Casa de Libertad in Plaza 25 de mayo. The paint businesses on Avenida Jaime Mendoza then realized their raison d’être as every home-owning Sucreño within 10 blocks joined the effort to repaint their façades white.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

green marx 2

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

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.
Posted in RagBlog, RagBlurb | Leave a comment

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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.

cape york rock art

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

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.

roxanne small

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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.

bohemians

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
aralyn hughes group small
METRO PODCAST | ‘Queen of Austin Weird!’ Thorne Dreyer’s Rag Radio interview with performance artist Aralyn Hughes, editor of ‘Kid Me Not.’
Posted in RagBlog, RagBlurb | Leave a comment

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.

bergdahl still

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.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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.

howie machtinger bullhorn crop 2

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.”
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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.

growth monster

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.

Continue reading →

Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments