Innehållsförteckning för October 7, 2013 från The Nation

The March on Washington at 50 San Diego In “How the Streets Honor MLK” [Sept. 2/9], Camilo José Vergara quotes a local resident as saying in reference to a Martin Luther King mural: “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so we all can fly.” Those words actually come from the song “My President Is Black,” by Jay-Z. Too often people simply see the materialistic side of hip-hop and overlook the social conscience roots the genre was largely born of, and that many artists still use music to make political statements. MATTHEW PETERSEN _________________________ Seattle Martin Luther King’s famous speech talks about all “men” being equal. Women helped in the equality movement, even after they realized that men…

I vividly recall the photo: Anthony Porter, who came within forty-eight hours of execution after seventeen years behind bars, exits the Cook County Correctional Facility in Illinois in February 1999, a free man. He sees Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess, who, along with his students, uncovered new evidence of Porter’s innocence, and gives him a massive bear hug, lifting him off the ground. It’s an incredibly powerful image, proof of how journalism can right terrible wrongs.
 After starting the Innocence Project at the Medill School of Journalism in 1999, Protess and his students freed twelve wrongfully convicted prisoners, including five from death row. Their work helped lead to a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, followed by Governor George Ryan’s historic emptying of the state’s death row. In…

Not long after George Zimmerman was
charged with killing Trayvon Martin, his wife, Shellie, called him in jail with an update on the money flooding into his PayPal account. 
 “After this is all over,” Shellie later told him, “you’re going to be able to just have a great life.”
 But in the nearly three months since his acquittal, the Zimmermans’ life hasn’t looked so great. It’s been unraveling in a style and at a pace that, in different circumstances, might have one day earned them a reality show. But Keeping Up With the Zimmermans is no joke. Shellie, who admitted to perjury for lying about not knowing how much money George had before the trial, has since filed for divorce, accusing him of having an affair with his ex-fiancée—the same…

In wars, and especially in counterinsurgency wars such as the American war in Afghanistan, it’s often said that killing civilians creates insurgents. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded US forces in the Afghan War, often referred to this as “insurgent math.” If it’s true, then the United States has created tens of thousands of insurgents since 2001, according to back-of-the-envelope calculations by the military itself and by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which studied the issue in 2010.
 “Because of CivCas [civilian casualties], I think we have just about eroded our credibility here in Afghanistan,” said McChrystal in 2010, according to the Marine Corps Times. Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall, then an aide to McChrystal, estimated roughly that every civilian killed creates an additional twenty insurgents. Hall noted that…

Mingus Speaks By John F. Goodman. California. 329 pp. $34.95. Beneath the Underdog His World as Composed by Mingus. By Charles Mingus. Vintage. 365 pp. Paper $17. The Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964–65 Mosaic Records. 7 CDs. $119. Selected Discography Mingus at the Bohemia (Debut, 1955) Pithecanthropus Erectus (Atlantic, 1956) The Clown (Atlantic, 1957) Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959) Mingus Dynasty (Columbia, 1959) Blues & Roots (Atlantic, 1960) Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960) Pre-Bird (Mercury, 1960) Oh Yeah (Atlantic, 1960) Tijuana Moods (RCA Victor, 1962) The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Impulse!, 1963) Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse!, 1963) Mingus Plays Piano (Impulse!, 1963) The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (America, 1964) Let My Children Hear Music (Columbia, 1972) Mingus at Antibes (Atlantic, 1976) At UCLA 1965…

The Sunday afternoon announcement that Larry Summers is giving up his quest to become Federal Reserve chair resonates with meaning for reform—both for the economy and for the Democratic Party. After several decades of dominance by the center-right New Democrats and their financial prerogatives, this is a huge loss for the wing that has been led by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the Clintons. And it foretells more to come. 
 When the Obama White House let it be known in early summer that the president expected to appoint Summers as successor to Fed chair Ben Bernanke, the party grassroots erupted in rage and rebellion. It amounted to a reward for the very policy architects who led the country into ruin with financial deregulation and Wall Street–friendly bailouts for…

Last fall in California, a broad coalition of community organizations, faith-based groups, advocates and unions came together to help pass Proposition 30, Governor Jerry Brown’s bid to raise taxes to increase state revenues for schools. To sell them on the initiative, Brown told voters, “Money into our schools or money out of our schools. It’s really stark.… The California dream is built on great public schools and colleges and universities.” Prop 30’s passage was a notable victory, with more than 55 percent of voters approving the measure despite a barrage of negative advertising paid for by out-of-state anti-tax groups. For the first time in a decade, thanks to Prop 30, the State of California is likely looking at a budget surplus.
 But now a move is afoot that could turn…

When an American soldier dies in Afghanistan, his death is not anonymous. The tragedy of that loss is mourned, and his life is remembered and celebrated. In many cases, the death is covered prominently in local and state media, often for several days. The Pentagon dutifully records the loss, medals are delivered, a ceremonial flag is presented to survivors, and the Defense Department pays the soldier’s family $100,000 in compensation, plus back pay, insurance, housing allowances and more. 
 But when an Afghan dies in the war—especially an Afghan civilian—her death is rarely noticed by the outside world. Often, it’s not even recorded by Afghan hospitals or morgues. Asked whether his country keeps records of civilian casualties, Said Jawad, the former Afghan ambassador to the United States, sighs. “In Afghanistan,…

Severe facial trauma and right-leg fracture. Right-leg amputation, lower left-leg fracture and pulmonary embolism. Lower left-leg amputation and multiple shrapnel wounds. Twelve injured in all. 
 And they were the lucky ones. 
 On February 21, 2010, Hellfire missiles from US helicopters streamed down on a convoy filled with militants—military-age males armed with rifles—near Shahidi Hassas, in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan Province. The band of insurgents was preparing to attack a small US force that was conducting a village raid with Afghan security forces. But the Americans had monitored their cellphone calls and knew all about their plans. A Predator drone had been surveilling their every move for hours and sending video feed to a base in Nevada. Air Force personnel there and at other facilities viewed the footage and helped coordinate…

In Jerusalem these days, reality seems to be breaking through reality. It’s the cultural equivalent of a sonic boom: “I love you!” A hailstorm of applause showers the slight man in black, who has just bounded down the theater aisle and leapt onto the stage like a game show host or a mega-church preacher. “Let’s have a hope for peace between Israel and Iran!” The clapping grows still louder. “I have a dream one day I invite all of you to Iran!” The whistling lifts to tea-kettle pitch as the crowd rises to its feet and he bows, palms pressed together, Namaste-style, then prostrates himself—possibly he’s joking, but maybe he’s not—and promptly springs back up to the microphone, declaring in his lilting, Persian-tinted English, “I don’t know what to say…

The latest Census Bureau figures on poverty in America, combined with the data on inequality released a week earlier, confirm a shocking new reality. While a sliver of top earners are doing better than they ever have before, for tens of millions of Americans, insecurity—and, for a distressing number, destitution—is the new norm. 
 The current Population Survey data show that 15 percent of Americans, roughly 46.5 million people, live at or below the government-defined poverty line—which, as most who work with the hungry, the homeless, the uninsured, and the underpaid or unemployed know, is itself an inadequate measure of poverty. By more reasonable measures, poverty in this country is even more pervasive. 
 The headline one can take away from this is that three years into the recovery from…

Even given the precipitous decline in both the circulation and the influence of all print media, the New York Times op-ed page remains the most prestigious perch in all of journalism. It’s a mystery, therefore, that it is treated so casually by those in charge of its composition. The Times can hire almost anyone its editor and publisher want, and yet—with a few obvious exceptions—they appear more comfortable settling for mediocre writers and thinkers who merely flatter the prejudices of the politically powerful.
 I could make my case with a number of Times columnists, but today’s exhibit is Frank Bruni, who is as clear an example of “failing upward” as can be found in the upper reaches of print journalism. 
 Bruni was named to the op-ed page in 2011…

There are many challenges in getting hard numbers on casualties in Afghanistan. ISAF limits the release of useful information about the dead—be they insurgents, civilians or allies—necessitating reliance on other sources. Afghan government officials are the next obvious source, but obtaining statistics from that quarter isn’t easy either. Nor is it cheap, as I found in the course of my reporting. 
 In one instance, I contacted the media office for the governor of Helmand Province through one of its two official e-mail addresses (a Gmail account). I asked if the office maintained records of civilian casualties resulting from insurgent attacks and ISAF combat operations. I soon received a reply from someone who identified himself as Abdul Matine, but whose e-mail address suggested his name was Jan Mohammad Shirzad. Writing…

Arifa had lost nearly everything when Marla Ruzicka walked through the door and into her life. The American intervention in Afghanistan had started just weeks before. A US bomb missed its target by three miles and landed instead on Arifa’s home, leaving her a widow at the age of 30. She buried her husband, eldest son and six other family members under small, chipped stone markers on a dirt street outside Kabul.
 To Arifa, Marla must have seemed to be from a different world, and in many ways she was. A quintessential California girl, Marla was gregarious and full of can-do optimism. But Afghanistan was sinking into her skin. The stories of all the wounded civilians deeply affected her as she traveled across the country in 2002. How could it…

Day lilies dotting the ditches orange, between tilting mailboxes, amid blue chicory and swales of yellow buttercups. Northwest on Jefferson Highway, alert for bright yellow signs printed YARD SALE, freight train clanging on my right. To follow arrows onto gravel driveways through the woods to arrive at run-down trailers or two-story homes with wraparound porches, wide front lawns and tables of children’s clothing, glassware, games, dolls, obsolete electronics. All around, blue tarps on wet grass with bags of worn quilts and sheets, paired shoes and boots, jeans laid out like Civil War soldiers piled in an open grave. To drive from sale to sale as the sun climbs the sky, blue as Hollywood eyes, coffee in a GO cup. To end at the Art & Craft Show at St. Jude’s,…