Lawyer up. Cartoon from TheDogs.
TRAVIS COUNTY — The proposal, reported in the Austin American-Statesman on April 12, to create a new system for the appointment of attorneys who represent poor criminal defendants in Travis County may have merit if there is sufficient accountability provided in the new system, a factor largely missing from the current court-appointed process.
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Prominent Egyptian social scientist and human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim was imprisoned by Mubarak.
[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman’s Rag Blog “people’s history” series, “The Movement to Democratize Egypt,” could not be more timely. Also see Feldman’s “Hidden History of Texas” series on The Rag Blog.]
An October 2001 Human Rights Watch background report indicated in the following way the degree to which the U.S. government-backed Mubarak regime had still failed to democratize Egyptian society very much between 1992 and 2000:
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Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in Dirty Pretty Things.
[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, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]
Dirty, Pretty Things is a powerful 2002 British film, available on DVD, Netflix, and Netflix Instant streaming, about the harrowing challenges facing two undocumented immigrants who work at a posh London hotel and live in constant fear of deportation.
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UT students protest “shared services.” Image from UT SSOC / Facebook.
AUSTIN — A robust coalition has emerged in opposition to a University of Texas plan for “shared services.” The plan, drafted for UT by Accenture, a global consulting corporation, would centralize administrative services, create call centers, and eliminate 500 jobs.
The UT Save Our Community Coalition (SSOC) has gathered more than 1,000 signatures on a petition opposing the University plan and will present them to the administration on April 23, the day of the rally.
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The grinning visage of Chief Wahoo. Image from Cleveland Frowns.
It’s crazy time again in Cleveland. Lake Erie has thawed. The snow has finally melted. Baseball season is underway. Once again the perennial argument over the Cleveland Indians team logo is heating up.
As Washington Redskin fans debate the political correctness of their team name, Indians fans and detractors grapple with the propriety of the grinning visage of Chief Wahoo, official face of the Indians.
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Eliza Gilkyson with Rag Radio’s Thorne Dreyer in the KOOP studios in Austin, March 21, 2014. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.
Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson joined us in interview and live performance on Rag Radio, Friday, March 21, 2014. Listen to the podcast below.
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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Hecht’s Weed Land doesn’t describe the everyday world of weed.
[Weed Land: Inside America’s Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit by Peter Hecht (2014: University of California Press); Paperback; $24.95; 264 pp.]
ROHNERT PARK, California — Joe Blow (not his real name) cultivated 13 marijuana plants. Sheriffs’ deputies arrived, arrested him and took him to jail. He went to court, the district attorney depicted him as an evil man and the judge sentenced him to a prison term.
That’s the gist of Peter Hecht’s new book Weed Land: Inside America’s Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit. There’s always a raid, a crackdown, and a referendum, too, to legalize or decriminalize. The Feds are always heavy, the growers usually naïve. It’s almost always bad news.
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AUSTIN — Austin novelist Thomas Zigal has won the prestigious Jesse Jones award for fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters for his highly-acclaimed novel about post-Katrina New Orleans, Many Rivers to Cross, published in November 2013 by TCU Press.
Tom Zigal on Rag Radio. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.
Past winners of the Jesse Jones Award include Larry McMurtry, Katerine Anne Porter, and Cormac McCarthy.
Many Rivers to Cross is set in August 2005, during the first three days after the monstrous Hurricane Katrina smashed into Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. The finely-crafted narrative follows several interrelated characters stranded in the flooded city as they struggle to survive.
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The Austin Beloved Community is inviting all working class poets, musicians, artists, organizers, activists, and friends to join together on May 1 for a May Day pot-luck party at Resistencia Books’ new location in East Austin. The event will celebrate International Workers Day and officially launch Austin Beloved Community – a website for Austin social justice organizations, artists, and activists to share collective memory and community organizing.
See Alice Embree’s Rag Blog article about Austin Beloved Community, here.
An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people gathered outside the North Carolina State Capitol in Februaty for a Moral Monday march in Raleigh. Image from fireflyfans.net.
The emergence of Moral Mondays in the South
WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana — “Moral Monday” refers to a burgeoning mass movement that had its roots in efforts to defend voter rights in North Carolina. Thousands of activists have been mobilizing across the South over the last year inspired by Moral Mondays.
They are fighting back against draconian efforts to destroy the right of people to vote, workers’ and women’s rights, and for progressive policies in general. Paradoxically, many progressives in the South and elsewhere have not heard of this budding movement.
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Searching for the real Jesus. Public domain image.
Part two of two.
In Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan portrays Jesus as a revolutionary zealot intent on overthrowing the Romans and driving them from Israel — land promised to the Jews by God. Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman analyzed the book and found numerous historical inaccuracies, some of which I described in Part 1 of this series.
But other Aslan mistakes about the New Testament accounts of Jesus provide even more evidence that Aslan simply doesn’t have the necessary background to write about the period and Jesus’s place in it.
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Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
