Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2, 2017 i The Nation

@thenation.com No Magazine Is an Island This is less a letter to the editor and more a note of concern about the decline of international news in The Nation. In the March 5 issue, there were precisely zero articles or columns on foreign affairs, unless you count the review by Stuart Klawans of several foreign films. I guess the age of foreign correspondents is long gone when magazines are so financially strapped. The issue was still full of good content, but The Nation is increasingly turning away from the rest of the world. LAIRD OKIE COLUMBIA, MO. Never Mind Armageddon Re “How to Get to a Fossil-Free USA,” by Bill McKibben [March 5]: Wind and solar power are not robust sources of baseload energy; nationally, they supply less than 8…

We all can recall some of those defining moments that mark the beginning or the end of major historical epochs: the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946, heralding the onset of the Cold War; the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, signaling the Cold War’s end; and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, precipitating our never-ending War on Terror. To these, we now must add a new inflection point: the escalation of the New Cold War this February. Three interconnected events have given February this distinctive status. First, the release of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, a blueprint for an expanded nuclear arsenal and a…

When will we really know what happened with Russia and the 2016 election? The story lines proliferate so quickly that it’s a full-time job following them all. Quick: How did the Democratic memo refute the Nunes memo? Identify: Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Felix Sater, Aras Agalarov, Reality Winner. Only a handful of diehards still maintain that Russia didn’t meddle in the election—OK, try to meddle. It does seem that evidence for Russia’s involvement is becoming stronger rather than weaker, a conviction hardly limited to fans of Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders himself said, “It is now clear to everyone that agents of the Russian government were, in a disgusting and dangerous manner, actively interfering in the 2016 elections in an effort to defeat Secretary Hillary Clinton.” But we still don’t know—and…

ANOTHER STORM IS SWEEPING INTO REYKJAVÍK ON THIS DARK AND COLD late-winter evening, but in the downstairs hall of the century-old Hannesarholt cultural house, several dozen Icelanders are basking in the warmth of their country’s rich literary heritage. The lecturer tonight is a small woman with a large personality. Her enthusiastic two-hour presentation, punctuated with dramatic readings, wry humor, and songs, traces the evolution of the love story across the centuries. The emphasis is on the evolving role of women and the emergence of feminist sensibilities. The crowd is thrilled by the literary depth and intellectual breadth of the evening and rewards Katrín Jakobsdóttir with a standing ovation, which she graciously accepts before heading back to her day job—as prime minister of Iceland. “I began my political participation through demonstrations.”…

If you’ve ever donated money to a Democrat, you’ve probably ended up on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list. If you’ve been pestered by robocalls for candidates you don’t know, from districts you don’t live in, you definitely have. Currently chaired by Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), the DCCC describes itself as the “official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.” Which sounds pretty innocuous. That’s what Laura Moser thought, too. The founder of Daily Action, a #Resistance text messaging service that sends out one call to action per day, Moser is a fifth-generation Houstonian who recently moved back home from Washington to run for Congress. Although Texas’s Seventh District has been in GOP hands since it elected George H.W. Bush in 1966, the wealthy suburbanites who compose…

Writers need to be aware that they are not neutral agents, that they are products of a certain history and class position. Last year, as soon as Ngugi wa Thiong’o entered a packed auditorium in Johannesburg, South Africa, to deliver a public lecture, he received a standing ovation. The audience whistled and cheered, jabbing their fists in the air as they chanted: “Ngugi! Ngugi! Ngugi!” More than 50 years after Weep Not, Child, the first novel published in English by an East African writer, the Kenyan remains a literary superstar and perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature. A fierce critic of Western imperialism and neoliberalism, Ngugi has largely abandoned writing in English, turning instead to his native Kikuyu. —Rohit Inani RI: In 1977, you published Petals of Blood,…

The most incendiary news to come out of the opioid summit at the White House on March 1 was no doubt President Trump’s suggestion that killing drug dealers would help to solve the country’s addiction epidemic. “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty—the ultimate penalty,” he said. “And, by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do.” This appalling comment continues Trump’s well-established pattern of emphasizing harsh and punitive law enforcement, rather than treatment, in response to the opioid crisis. But other proposals took a different tack. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is considering allowing states to expand treatment at Medicaid-funded centers. Trump also said the government would consider suing drug manufacturers for deceptive marketing practices and for failing…

On the morning after Jacinda Ardern became the youngest leader in the history of New Zealand’s Labour Party and launched her uphill campaign to become the country’s next prime minister, she was confronted with one of the most archaic complaints about women moving into positions of power. On the nationally broadcast AM Show, sports commentator Mark Richardson opined that New Zealanders had a right to know whether a contender for the country’s top job might become pregnant and take maternity leave. “If you are the employer of a company, you need to know that type of thing from the woman you are employing,” Richardson said. “Is it OK for a PM to take maternity leave while in office?” The 37-year-old Ardern told the show’s host, Duncan Garner, that she was…

100 Number of mass shooters (defined as individuals who indiscriminately kill three or more victims in a public place) in the United States since 1982, according to Mother Jones 97% Percentage of mass shooters who have been male 57% Percentage of mass shooters who have been white and male 69% Minimum percentage of guns used by these shooters that were purchased legally 816 Number of people killed by mass shooters since 1982 1,275 Estimated number of people injured by mass shooters since 1982…

Climate-change deniers are taking advantage of little-known “open access journals” with minimal quality control to publish their questionable research. One prominent denier, Nils-Axel Mörner, has produced multiple articles claiming that sea levels aren’t rising around low-lying Pacific islands. According to The Guardian, one of Mörner’s pieces was issued by Juniper Publishers, which once accepted onto its editorial board a “Dr. Olivia Doll”—an invented character based on a university professor’s Staffordshire terrier. To highlight the problem of these open-access journals, a biologist recently submitted research about the effects on the human body of crossing the warp-10 boundary. Fans of Star Trek would likely recognize that the paper, “Rapid Genetic and Developmental Morphological Change Following Extreme Celerity,” resembled the plot of a much-maligned episode in season two of Voyager. The anonymous researcher…

Some time ago, I discovered a trove of boxes stashed away in my late parents’ attic, and, ever since, I’ve been working my way through this archive of family photos, letters, scrapbooks, and other ephemera, which extends back almost 150 years. Two of the most precious things I’ve found are photos of my paternal great-grandfather and my maternal great-grandmother, both born into slavery. I am fortunate enough to have grown up with lots of stories passed down about both of them, but I had never seen either of their faces before. The sudden apparition of their oddly familiar features has been so startling, so jolting, so magical that I often feel as though I’m hallucinating. It is almost as if their images had coiled upward from the scrapbook, like smoke,…

Skokie, Ill. THE YOUNG WOMAN IN THE BLACK sweatshirt was indignant. Across the negotiating table, a stern, occasionally sharp-tongued adversary was refusing to budge—first on wages and then on the organization’s social-media policy. “We’re a hospital,” the woman said with marked intensity. “Don’t you agree that our first responsibility is to our patients?” Nearby, a cluster of people were engaged in a fierce debate on the fairness of random drug tests for employees. Over in a far corner, a third group traded opinions on whether to accept management’s proposal to offer new hires 401(k)s instead of pensions. “It’s just for new employees,” said a guy in a purple T-shirt. “But we have to think about solidarity,” replied a young woman in clear-framed glasses. The speakers weren’t impassioned union representatives or…

ACROSS 1 Steamship in a lake? Quite the opposite when making a TV show (6) 4 Style accessory is small and brittle (8) 10 George and Gregory hugging antelope as a measure of love? (1,6,3,1,4) 11 Lightweight to damage set of rules (7) 12 Boy grabs ruined one-ply leaf (4,3) 13 Bill, before eating salt in a place of worship (10) 15 In the end, roast zebra is not kosher (4) 18 Not Common Era (looking back after start of Renaissance) (4) 20 Capital card game on tape (10) 23 Cultivate hybrid, finally, with someone who ate an apple and prune (7) 24 US citizen replacing me with force of another continent (7) 25 World War II leader divides noodle-soup vessel with elite shooter (15) 26 Nervous and playful? (8)…