Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******


The symbolic stoning of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Posted on April 15, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Brandeis University rescinds speaking invitation to Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of denigration of women in Islamic societies.

ayaan hirsi ali 2
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Paris. Photo by Martin Bureau / AFP / Getty Images.
By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | April 15, 2014
The Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali was to be the commencement speaker next month at Brandeis University, named for former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. But voices of hysteria, censorship, and bullying won the day and Brandeis University’s president rescinded the invitation and the honorary degree she was to receive because of Hirsi Ali’s outspoken criticism of the widespread Islamic degradation and denigration of women.
I read her autobiographical book Infidel seven years ago. Her life story is compelling, educational, and unique. She left Somalia with her family as a little girl because of the civil strife in that country and lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and finally Kenya. At the age of 21 she immigrated to the Netherlands, eventually becoming a member of the Dutch Parliament.
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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******

a comment

Harry Targ :
Workers’ Memorial Day: What is needed?

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Remembering those who died on the job and continuing the fight for a safer workplace.

workers day
This year’s events will highlight demands to address contemporary issues of concern.
By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | April 28, 2014
The stench is vomit-making as never before. The fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed; demand closer concentration than ever, more speed. A helpless, hysterical laughter starts up. Indeed, they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked. Geared, meshed.
In the hog room, 108 degrees. Kerchiefs, bound around their foreheads to keep the sweat from running down into eyes and blinding, become saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from the vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack. (Is carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts pound near to bursting. Relentless, the conveyor paces on.
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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******


BOOKS | C.L.R. James: Back in style, black in style
Posted on May 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

‘C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain’ opens up the issue of the Third World struggle in an elegant and memorable way.

clr james in imperial britain
By Paul Buhle and Milton Knight | Truthout | May 5, 2014
Author’s note: This marks the first appearance of excerpts from C.L.R. James, a Graphic History, a comic art book in process, drawn by distinguished African-American artist Milton Knight, edited by Paul Buhle. The excerpts — young Trinidadian James grows to self-consciousness and emigrates to London, writes a play about Toussaint Louverture, with Paul Robeson starring — are easily understood.
[C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain by Christian Hogsbjerg (2014: Duke University Press): Paperback;  312 pp.; $24.95.]
This year marks a quarter-century since the death of Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-89). His obituary in The New York Times, putting aside many other interests and qualities of a long and productive life, mainly described him as the last giant of Pan-Africanism.
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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******


David McReynolds :
On becoming a living fossil

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

David may have been ahead of his time, but he was late to pick up Muriel Lester.

muriel lester 2
Radical pacifist Muriel Lester.
By David McReynolds | The Rag Blog | May 7, 2014
NEW YORK — This past Friday I went up to a Unitarian Church here in Manhattan to take part in a series of interviews for a film project of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Virginia Baron had been there just before me, and Leslie Cagan was arriving as I left. The chances are good I may have been, at 84, the oldest of those interviewed.
On the way up I had thought of a story involving the late Muriel Lester, but as I got to the church her name had escaped my mind. I realized, as I sat waiting while the lights were adjusted, that none of those working the cameras would have the slightest idea of whom I might be thinking. They were all young, and Muriel was long dead. (She has an all-too-brief entry in Wikipedia and Richard Deats, whose health has recently not been good, edited a book about Muriel several years ago).
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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******

, , | 13 Comments

Bob Feldman :
People’s History of Egypt, Part 24, January-February 11, 2011

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

In early February 2011, massive street protests opposed Mubarak and called for democratization and economic justice.

tahrir square sunset
Sunset on Tahrir Square, February 2011. Image from c-Blog.
By Bob Feldman | The Rag Blog | May 12, 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.]
According to James Gelvin’s 2012 book, The Arab Uprising: What Everyone Needs To Know, in Egypt “youths between 15 and 29 make up…30 percent” of the population and “youth unemployment in Egypt is 43 percent.” The same book also noted:
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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   



Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.
*******

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Jonah Raskin :
BOOKS | Gordon Young’s ‘Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City’

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Teardown’ has the kind of heart that once made Flint, Michigan, a center of trade union and labor activism.

teardown
Teardown is a grim portrait with heart.
By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | May 13, 2014
[Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young (June 2013: University of California Press); Hardcover; 288 pp; $29.95]
Gordon Young’s book about Flint, Michigan, Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City, might have been a depressing read. After all, the facts and the figures about crime and about poverty are likely to keep any sensible family from moving there. They might also persuade longtime residents to get out when they still can and locate somewhere else. Like San Francisco, where Young himself now lives.
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