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September 02, 2022
TG 866: Biden Issues Extraordinary Threat to His Oppoents

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss President Biden's extraordinary speech in Philadelphia in which he denigrated and threatened half of America's population.

01:08:07
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The Gaggle Music Club: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84, one of the great man's most political and dramatic compositions.

Composed in 1809–1810, the overture was part of incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1787 play "Egmont," which recounted the story of Count Egmont, a 16th-century Dutch nobleman who was executed by the Spanish for opposing the Inquisition and tyranny of the Duke of Alba. Goethe’s Egmont was a tragedy of political martyrdom and individual resistance against tyranny.

In 1809, Beethoven was living in Vienna, which was under siege by Napoleon’s troops. The Imperial Court Theatre in Vienna commissioned Beethoven to write music for a revival of Goethe’s play. The complete incidental music includes the Overture and nine numbers. However, it is only the Overture that has endured as a concert staple.

The Overture is in sonata form, a musical drama in miniature, encapsulating the play’s arc: oppression, resistance, ...

00:09:35
TG 1909: Trump's Unprovoked Attack On Iran: The Day After

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss the aftermath and likely consequences of President Trump's unprovoked--and, as yet, unexplained--attack on Iran.

02:18:20
TG 1908: U.S. Attacks Iran

George Szamuely discusses tonight's U.S. bombing of Iran's three nuclear facilities.

00:12:03
The Gaggle Book Club: "All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror" By Stephen Kinzer

Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it. Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection, very appropriate for this moment, is Stephen Kinzer’s "All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror." Published in 2003, and revised in 2008, the book is one of the most readable accounts of the 1953 CIA–MI6 coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. It’s an entertaining, vivid, journalistically written narrative with a clear political message: American intervention in Iran set the stage for decades of mistrust, repression and violence—not only in Iran, but across the Middle East.

Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign ...

All_the_Shah_s_Men___An_American_Coup_and_the_Roots_of_--_Stephen_Kinzer_--_John_Wiley___Sons,_Inc__(trade),_Hoboken,_N_J_,_2003_--_John_Wiley___Sons_.pdf
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January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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