Bob Feldman :
A People’s History of Egypt, Part 21, Section 1, 1992-2000

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

The Mubarak government responds to Islamist violence with heavy-handed repression; the Muslim Brotherhood splinters; Egyptian poverty increases.

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Mubarak after assassination attempt in Ethiopia, June 26, 1995. Photo from AFP.

By Bob Feldman | The Rag Blog | April 8, 2014

[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.]

As Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt recalled, the Mubarak regime mostly tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood between 1981 and 1991, but in 1993 it “launched a major assault on the organization, denouncing it as “illegal,” and accusing it of having “ties to extremist groups” responsible for violently opposing the Mubarak regime; and “hundreds of suspects” were then “jailed and tried in military courts after successive rounds of arrests.”
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METRO | Rag Blog columnist Lamar Hankins proves too much for San Marcos Mercury

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

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

lamar hankinsSAN MARCOS — Former San Marcos City Attorney Lamar W. Hankins has published his provocative, hard-hitting column in The Rag Blog since June 2010.  A version of his column has also appeared at the mainstream online San Marcos Mercury even longer, since 2008.

Until last week, that is, when Mercury editor/publisher Brad Rollins decided to pull the plug. Rollins’ odd reasoning for this move was that, try as he might, he couldn’t find writers to “balance” Hankins’ combative but consistently well-reasoned progressive politics.
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Alan Waldman :
‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ is utterly delightful series set in otherworldly Botswana

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

American singers Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose are priceless in this charming 2008-2009 British series.

no 1 ladies detective agency

The award-winning No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency lasted one season on HBO.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | April 7, 2014

Scotsman Alexander McCall Smith wrote 13 delightful The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels from 1998 to 2012, and Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient), just before his untimely death at age 54, co-created the wonderful eight-episode TV version, which aired on HBO in 2009.

After only one season, it won a Peabody Award, AFI’s “TV Program of the Year,” a NAMIC “Best Actress” Vision award for star Jill Scott, three Emmy nominations and 10 other award noms. I never met anyone who watched it and didn’t adore it.
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METRO | GI coffeehouse, Iraq vets respond to latest Fort Hood tragedy

Posted on April 6, 2014 by RagBlog
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Iraq vet Malachi Muncy of Under the Hood Café and his daughter Lily place flowers in the fence near Fort Hood’s east gate during candlelight vigil, April 4, 2014. Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images. Image from Lily Muncy’s Photostream / Zimbio.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | April 7, 2014

KILLEEN — When Spec. Ivan A. Lopez opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood on April 2, he killed four people and wounded 16 more. He was one of the casualties.

In a response sent to their supporters, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) said: “We [like President Obama] are heartbroken, because this shooting could have been prevented.”
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Leslie Cunningham :
Fifty years ago and counting

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

For a white kid graduating from high school in 1963 and already involved in civil rights, seeing Dr. King at the Washington Monument highlighted a momentous year.

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Members of civil rights group HSBE (High School Students for Better Education) register as federal lobbyists. Leslie Lincoln (now Cunningham) is second from left. According to Les, “most of the black students were left out of the picture.” Photo from the Washington Post.

By Leslie Cunningham | The Rag Blog | April 3, 2014

“We missed you at the 50th reunion.”

It was a phone call out of the blue, from a totally unfamiliar area code and number. A raucous voice started singing a song in Arabic that I had learned in 1957. “Who is this?” I yelled. “Who could know that song?”

A laugh. “It’s Janet. Janet Frank.” I hadn’t talked to her in 50 years. We caught up a little. A terrific musician in high school, she still plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra. Wow! All I could offer was a history of government jobs from which I am now retired.
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Jack A. Smith :
What really happened in Ukraine?

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Nothing quite like this move on the geopolitical chessboard has happened since the U.S. became the world’s single superpower over two decades ago.

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A child drags a toy truck past pro-Russian soldiers at a Ukrainian military base in Crimea. PA photo. Image from thejournal.ie.

By Jack A. Smith | The Rag Blog | April 3, 2014

“The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then.”
— Henry Kissinger, Washington Post, March 6, 2014

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
— Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1998)

Russia has taught the United States a stern and embarrassing lesson in Ukraine as a riposte to Washington-backed regime change in Kiev, the capital. “So far,” Moscow in effect warned a thoroughly shocked Washington, “but no further.” President Vladimir Putin then annexed Crimea.

Nothing quite like this move on the geopolitical chessboard has happened since the U.S. became the world’s single superpower over two decades ago.
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Robert Jensen :
BOOKS | Barking dogs and sinking ships: Journalism’s search for metaphor and meaning

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Dean Starkman explains why journalists often aren’t alert watchdogs, but he can’t see why limiting the profession to the role of a barking dog is, quite literally, a dead end.

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The blind biting the blind?

By Robert Jensen | The Rag Blog | April 2, 2014

[The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism by Dean Starkman (2014: Columbia Journalism Review Books); Hardcover: $24.95; 368 pages.]

The fundamental failure of Dean Starkman’s The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism — and of mainstream journalism more generally — is hidden in plain sight in the title’s metaphor. Starkman explains why journalists often aren’t alert watchdogs, but he can’t see why limiting the profession to the role of a barking dog is, quite literally, a dead end.

To explain that rather harsh judgment, allow me to mix metaphors: The best the journalistic watchdog can do these days is bark at people rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and meanwhile the train has left the station.
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Sarah Berlin :
Radical justice and ‘Radical Jesus,’ coming to a bookstore near you

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Radical Jesus’ rediscovers Jesus as a radical leftist thinker and traces changemakers inspired by his teachings.

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Frame from Paul Buhle’s Radical Jesus.

By Sarah Berlin | In These Times | April 2, 2014

A comic book might be the last place you’d expect to find Jesus. But a recent book edited by Paul Buhle provides just that opportunity, albeit not the Jesus you’d recognize from right-wing Christian depictions.

Using vivid imagery and lively storytelling, Radical Jesus: A Graphic History of Faith rediscovers Jesus as a radical leftist thinker. The authors and artists trace the long history of changemakers inspired by Jesus’ teachings of peace, justice, and equality, moving from biblical times to the 16th-century Radical Reformation to modern-day movements like civil rights.
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Harry Targ :
Raise the minimum wage now

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Working people are on the move and grassroots groups are demanding a fair minimum wage.

minimum wage cartoon

Political cartoon by Nick Anderson / The Houston Chronicle. Image from Sky Dancing.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | April 1, 2014

The experience of increasing poverty, economic marginalization, and the rise of political reaction against workers, unions, women, people of color, the right to vote, and basic dignity for the 99 percent has stimulated mass mobilizations in protest over the last two years.

From Arab Spring, to protests all across the Midwest in defense of worker’s rights, to the Occupy Movement, anti-racist campaigns in Florida and elsewhere against so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, and the Moral Majority mobilizations inspired by fight backs against the suppression of voter rights, working people are on the move.
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Thorne Dreyer :
PODCASTS | Filmmaking, pupulism, the attack on public education, and Texas politics on Rag Radio

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Al Reinert with singer Sima Cunningham; pundit Jim Hightower; education activists Julian Vasquez Heilig and Mike Klonsky; and politics with Glenn Smith and Jeff Crosby.

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Al Reinert, back row in cap, flanked by Rag Radio’s Tracey Schulz, left, and Thorne Dreyer. Front and center:  Sima Cunningham with accompanist Dorian Gehring to her right. At the KOOP studios in Austin, March 14, 2014. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | March 31, 2014

Listen to podcasts of recent Rag Radio shows, featuring guests Al Reinert (with performance by Sima Cunningham); Jim Hightower;  Julian Vasquez Heilig and Mike Klonsky; and Glenn Smith with Jeff Crosby.

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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Dave Zirin :
SPORT | The Northwestern University Football Union and the NCAA’s death spiral

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

The NCAA is now in a fight for its life. Its power emanates solely from its position as a cartel.

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The porcine athletic establishment and the scent of the slaughterhouse.

By Dave Zirin | The Rag Blog | March 28, 2014

“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered…” – Mark Cuban

The experts said that the efforts of the Northwestern University football team to form a union would crash and burn. The experts scoffed that these naïve jocks would lose their case before the National Labor Relations Board. The experts all believed that this is what they call “settled law.”

After all, since the 1950s, when the widow of a football player who died on the field of play failed in her efforts to sue the NCAA for Worker’s Compensation, it was clear to the courts that these were not workers but “student-athletes.” The experts were proven wrong on Wednesday and the established order in the sports world has been shaken to its foundations.
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Lamar W. Hankins :
Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Mistakes in ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,’ show that Reza Aslan lacks the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it.

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Jesus drives money changers from the temple. Image from SF Gate.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | March 27, 2014

Part one of two.

Just over 78% of adults in the U.S. report that they are Christian, according to the latest Pew Research findings. The thesis of a relatively new book by Reza Aslan should interest them. In Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Aslan portrays Jesus as a revolutionary zealot intent on the overthrow of the Romans in order to drive them from the land of Israel — land promised to the Jews by God.

It is not a new thesis. I remember Christians and others in the 1960s who viewed Jesus as a revolutionary for other reasons — mainly as a figure who wanted to create a society of equality that was closer to communism than to corporate capitalism.
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