Innehållsförteckning för October 22, 2018 från The Nation

This September marks the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, which were heralded by many at the time of their signing as the dawn of a new era in the Middle East, one in which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization would replace conflict with negotiations that would lead to peace and a Palestinian state. Some observers at the time—including Edward Said, in this magazine—pointed out the flaws in that 1993 declaration, among them that while the PLO recognized the state of Israel and renounced violence, the accords never mentioned Israel’s occupation, never noted the illegality of Israeli settlements, and contained no promise—or, indeed, even any mention—of a Palestinian state as the end result of talks. Whatever its virtues or flaws, the Oslo “peace process,” which has been on life…

The House of Representatives appears set to pass a bill stuffed with attacks on the Affordable Care Act, including a provision that would allow companies to stop providing health insurance to employees working between 30 and 39 hours per week. The so-called Save American Workers Act would do exactly the opposite of what its name suggests, by racheting up the already long hours that Americans spend at work. While we’re not at the top of the list of developed countries with excessive work hours—Mexico, Greece, South Korea, and nine others are higher—Americans work about 20 more hours each year than the average. One study in 2016 found that the average European puts in somewhere between 7 and 19 percent less time at work than the average American, which translates to…

Recently, talking to a panel of five influential Republican women, CNN reporter Randi Kaye elicited a tidy list of reasons why they believed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh hadn’t done anything wrong; why Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexual assault, must surely be lying or trying to ruin him; and, simultaneously, why even if she were telling the truth, it wouldn’t be a big deal. In under three minutes, the panel’s participants delivered a comprehensive and common litany of rationalizations for assault, battery, clothes-ripping, pussy-grabbing, and broad acts of misogyny among some of the most privileged males of our species. These arguments are specious. I have condensed them into 10 talking points, followed by some well-worn responses that I had the foresight to store in a time…

SINCE THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE, CHAUCER, AND T.S. ELIOT—each of whom had unpleasant things to say about the children of Israel—lacks a term capable of encompassing the current state of relations between Britain’s Jews and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, we turn instead to the beautiful Yiddish word broyges. Deriving from the Hebrew for “anger,” a broyges is a dispute or quarrel—with a strong undertone of grudge. Depending on which side you’re on, the current broyges between Corbyn and the Jews reached its peak on August 23, when the Daily Mail unearthed a five-year-old video of Corbyn telling a pro-Palestinian group that “Zion ists…have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they…

Lessons From and for AOC Thank you for an excellent cover story, “The AOC Effect,” about the Democratic Party’s new rock star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [Sept. 10/17]. Although I am pleased that Ocasio-Cortez is campaigning for other progressive candidates, she needs to remember one thing: The guy she beat, Congressman Joe Crowley, also received national attention and was a front-runner for Speaker of the House. He neglected his district while soaking up praise from Democrats across the country. It’s more fun traveling the country and getting applause from people all over the United States than helping a senior citizen with a problem or fighting to get funds to renovate a low-income housing complex. But to win reelection, our future congressperson must remember that all politics is local. She needs to spend…

1.3M Estimated number of people displaced by World Bank-funded projects in Vietnam $10M Minimum amount of World Bank funding used in 2015 for the violent eviction of a minority farming community in Ethiopia 25M Metric tons of CO2 released per year by a World Bank-funded power plant in South Africa—more than the total emissions of many nations 1,000 Number of people who reported symptoms of mercury poisoning following an accident at a gold mine in Peru funded by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation 133 Number of deaths in a land dispute between peasant collectives and a World Bank-funded palm-oil corporation in Honduras (Sources: ICIJ and Huffington Post)…

1/3 of Americans work 45 hours or more a week, and 9.7 million work more than 60. Americans work 7.8% more hours a year than they did in 1979. The average workday in Europe is about one hour less than in the US. Long hours are making us sick. Americans sleep just 6.5 hours a night, a drop from the 1940s. Yet many Republicans say it’s not enough hours of work: 20 million people who work 30–39 hours a week may lose benefits under a GOP plan if they don’t work more. Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic Policy Institute, IZA, National Sleep Foundation, Gallup 2018 Infographic: Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz…

The task force assembled to help certain elderly Britons confirm their citizenship is instead denying it to them, according to the United Kingdom’s new home secretary, Sajid Javid. The Tory government has again decided that many members of the so-called Windrush generation—people from the Caribbean who moved to the UK before their countries gained independence from Britain—are undocumented immigrants, even though they arrived as citizens of the British Empire. Three people who were wrongly deported have died waiting for the UK to recognize their right to return, and at least a dozen others who stayed in Britain have become homeless after their new status as “illegal immigrants” prevented them from working. Earlier this year, the British government appeared chastened and apologized to (a very small number of) the affected, promised…

ACROSS 1 Someone who brought Oscar home protects distressed Grouch with prayer (10) 6 Cautious women, we hear, concealing a summer activity (4) 9 Profit involving a share of rye or barley, perhaps (5) 10 Tapestry artist following G. Puccini character’s imitation (9) 12 What you might wear on the slopes to bypass bugs (3,5) 13 Ask probing questions about federal organization, and settle early (6)  15 Drowsy moon’s terribly advanced (9) 16 Singable clip taken from ghastly rickroll (5) 17 Spoken instructions on how to turn 2 into 8 (or 18) inches (5)  19 Obnoxious agent beginning to tweet after talk show (9) 21 Look at area in the back of the boat, staying on top of water (6) 22 Tautology juxtaposed with random chat? That doesn’t go together…

COMMENT On September 13, first-time political candidate Julia Salazar—dubbed “the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” by a number of media pundits—did something astonishing. Despite an exhaustive legal challenge by her opponent contesting the length of her residency in New York State, followed by weeks of negative media reports questioning key elements of her biography as well as her role in a bizarre scandal involving the ex-wife of baseball player Keith Hernandez, a childhood neighbor, Salazar ousted veteran State Senator Martin Dilan in the Democratic primary by 17 points. How did this happen? Like Ocasio-Cortez but to an even greater degree, Salazar ran as a candidate of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose New York City chapter, NYC-DSA, recruited her for the race. (Full disclosure: I am a member of that chapter.) According…

On September 7, thousands of housekeepers, waitstaff, cooks, and door attendants at more than two dozen hotels across Chicago walked off their jobs. Their main grievance centered on the practice of hotel management stripping workers of their health care when they’re temporarily laid off during a down season. “Hotels may slow down in the wintertime, but I still need my diabetes medication when I’m laid off,” one housekeeper told the Chicago Sun-Times. During the two terms of Rahm Emanuel—dubbed “Mayor 1 Percent” by local activists—workers in Chicago have repeatedly used collective action to improve their employment situations. The Chicago Teachers Union staged two massive strikes, including a historic seven-day face-off with City Hall in 2012, while, over the past year, hundreds of auto mechanics and window washers have successfully gone…

“There are two kinds of European nations,” said Kristian Jensen, the Danish finance minister, last year. “There are small nations, and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.” With Brexit, it’s become painfully obvious that the United Kingdom is among the latter. In their melancholic yearning for a time long past, those who ran the campaign to leave the European Union had a vision of us marching out, suited and booted, bowler hat on head, umbrella in hand, striding proudly backward into a past of glorious independence. As time goes on, a far more likely scenario is that Britain will be unceremoniously ejected from the EU with its pants down and land flat on its behind. The concern had once been that Britain would get…