METRO | Tom Zigal’s gripping post-Katrina novel wins state’s top literary award

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | April 9, 2014

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.

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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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METRO EVENT | ‘Beloved Community’ sets May Day fest in Austin

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
Event: Celebration of International Workers Day / Día del Trabajo
Occasion: Launch of Austin Beloved Community website
Date: Thursday, May 1, 2014
Time: 5:30-10 p.m.
Place: Resistencia Books
Address: 4926 East César Chávez St., Austin TX

may day imageThe 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.

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Harry Targ :
Do we all need a Moral Monday movement?

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

The burgeoning Moral Monday ‘fusion movement,’ with roots in North Carolina, has spread throughout the South, and states like Indiana may be next in line.

moral monday march

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.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | April 9, 2014

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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Lamar W. Hankins :
Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history / 2

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Aslan provides embellishments that make for an interesting read but many of his assumptions, according to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, lack historical accuracy.

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Searching for the real Jesus. Public domain image.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | April 8, 2014

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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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
muncy ft hood vigil

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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