Innehållsförteckning för September 12-19, 2016 från The Nation

@thenation.com Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man I’ve been mulling over Barry Schwabsky’s take on the Philip Guston show at Hauser & Wirth [“Maker’s Marks,” June 20/27]. I reacted so strongly to his empathy for David McKee. The focus on McKee’s demeanor was, although delicately presented, beautifully observed. Having known Philip well, however, I wish to add my two cents on this passage: “The search for fresh ingredients meant not only poring through the history of art, but also keeping an eye on younger painters. I don’t think it’s really true that in the late 1950s and ’60s, Guston was—as a gallery wall text claims—‘very much removed from the public debate, apart and alone in his studio.’ Could those final drawings ever have come into being without him…

The devastating photo of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance after his home was bombed in Syrian or Russian air strikes has amped up calls for direct US military intervention against the Syrian government. The now-viral photo of Omran—and the broader siege of east Aleppo—was prominently featured in most major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and several other publications. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all ran stories on the photo, and editorial boards and pundits weighed in as well, with several insisting that President Obama must “do something” to stop the suffering of the Syrian people. According to the Chicago Tribune editorial board, State Department officials “sent a cable to Obama, urging stronger military action against Syrian government forces. They suggested that…

The Nation needs your help! We’re looking to complete our archive of back issues—essential references for the staff here at the magazine. We know that many of our readers keep their copies the magazine, so if you happen to be one of those devoted subscribers—and don’t mind giving up a copy—we’d be grateful for these missing issues: Are you a collector or library? We’re also missing the following volumes: #11 (July–December 1870), #108 (January–June 1919), and #182 (January–June 1956). If you have any of these issues or volumes that you’d like to donate, please e-mail deputy managing editor Kate Murphy at kate@thenation.com to make mailing arrangements.…

The historian Richard White writes this week about the genocide of California’s Indians in the mid-19th century. Founded just as that slaughter was going on, The Nation has a record on the subject that is, by turns, impressive and appalling. Just over 150 years ago, the magazine published two editorials titled “Our Indian Policy.” The first described the tens of thousands of US troops “exclusively occupied against the Indians and in protecting our continental thoroughfares from their unremitting hostilities.” The “scattered settlements” built on the plains, “and the growing overland commerce whose profits are reckoned by scores of millions, owe their prosperity and stability to the same military police.” Even so, The Nation argued, “The cost of this warfare is appalling, and its disgrace deep.” Instead, The Nation called for…

I remember when reporter Seth Freed Wessler first told me that he believed people were dying needlessly inside the federal government’s privatized prisons. It was more than three years ago now. Riots kept breaking out in those facilities, and sources were telling Seth that, despite the official line about gangs, the unrest was actually due to shockingly bad medical care. But the facts—how many people were dying, what was killing them, and who was responsible—were murky at best. The only thing we knew was that this problem was rooted in our government’s catastrophic decision to criminalize border crossing, a choice that ballooned the federal-prison population so quickly that it demanded a fast, cheap solution: privatization. Three years later, we know the ugly facts: The facilities that the Bureau of Prisons…

Moira Weigel’s book Labor of Love explores how capitalism created dating and continues to shape its practice. My Nation advice column “Asking for a Friend” is similarly preoccupied with the political economy of our personal lives. So we had to get together for a chat about love, sex, and capital. — Liza Featherstone Liza Featherstone: There’s some nostalgia today for a time when dating was more romantic, more pure. When was that? Moira Weigel: Around 2013, books called The End of Men and The End of Sex came out, and The New York Times did a big article called “The End of Courtship.” I was interested in what cultural work these narratives about the degradation of romance were doing. One of the things I discovered was that when dating was…

A number of French seaside resort towns have banned the “burkini,” a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women. The mayors of these towns—all men—deemed the garment too provocative and have sought to enforce a return to properly French skimpy swimwear. Below, their comments on the menace to women’s equality posed by the too-modest burkini: Burkinis are part of “the enslavement of women.” — Prime Minister Manuel Valls “The burkini disrupts the public peace and goes against republican values.” — Henri Leroy, mayor of Mandelieu-la-Napoule The burkini “is an increased phenomenon that can lead to creating certain tensions.” — Michel Py, mayor of Leucate The burkini goes “against respect for laïcité and femininity.” — Oliver Majewicz, mayor of Oye-Plage, who calls the ban a “precaution” “We want to protect the…

If it’s Yuletide in the New World, then what bellies up to the manger are rattler, gator, buzzard. Just as a wooden snake in a basket of toys at this barber shop I bring the boys seems to hiss “…es su casa,” I take the part of the friendly stranger only where hair is imperiled. Festive lights are strung up, arranged around amusing headlines on the wall: rosenbergs die (scissors flashing); bin laden killed (clippers gnashing) and that’s not all (no, that’s not all…) man in tx jail cell found hanged. * Horsemen of upcountry limestone, Quahadis rode through sumac that tore at the clothes and the flesh, hunters to the bone. Never touched a hair on the head of their own or adopted child, fed on half-digested sweet milk…

13.5M People in Syria in need of urgent humanitarian assistance 4.8M Current number of Syrian refugees 2.7M Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey (more than any other nation) 10K Syrian refugees that the Obama administration has pledged to accept by the end of September 30 US governors who have tried to block Syrian refugees from entering their states “Who will do anything?” Zaher Sahloul, a critical-care physician from Chicago, writing in The Guardian about the plight of Syrian children caught up in the country’s civil war…

Julian Assange really, really doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. His bile for the Democratic presidential nominee is so uncontainable that it even spewed onto fellow antisecrecy icon Edward Snowden, whom the WikiLeaks founder has accused of sucking up to Clinton in hopes of gaining a future presidential pardon. At a time when many on the left are wrestling with whether to vote for Clinton despite her well-known shortcomings or risk that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will somehow win the presidency in November, Assange evinces no doubts: Hillary must go down. Meanwhile, Assange himself is under fire from gays in Saudi Arabia, dissidents in Turkey, and nonconformists elsewhere who complain that WikiLeaks’ unredacted release of their names and personal information has exposed them to persecution from the very authorities that Assange claims to oppose. On…

Oh, France, what is the matter with you? In the wake of the Bastille Day massacre of 84 by a Tunisian truck driver who plowed through a crowd in Nice, followed by the murder of a Catholic priest by jihadis in Normandy, Nice, Cannes, and several other beach towns have banned the “burkini,” the top-to-toe bathing suit for Muslim women. Never mind that few actually wear this religious wet suit, although it’s becoming more popular as more retailers market them. And never mind that the Tunisian truck driver seems not to have been particularly devout. Or that there’s something strange about insisting that women wear revealing swimwear against their will. Some Muslim women bathe in their clothes and hijab—will that be illegal too? What if you don’t go in the…

Those of us who call ourselves british and were of agein 1990 will remember the Conservative politician Norman Tebbit and his so-called “cricket test.” Immigrants from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies, said Tebbit, should support teams from Britain and not from their countries of origin or ancestry. Anyone who didn’t shouldn’t consider themselves British. “Which side do they cheer for?” Tebbit asked. “It’s an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?” I was reminded of Tebbit’s test on a recent visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The hotel bartender, hearing my accent, told me his favorite soccer team was Manchester United. I know little about soccer, but enough to know that Manchester United is a Premier League club, possibly the…

An American Genocide The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe. By Benjamin Madley. Yale. 712 pp. $38. This spring, the US Congress passed a unanimous resolution condemning ISIS for its genocide against Yazidis, Christians, and Shiites. “Naming these crimes is important,” Secretary of State John Kerry said after the vote, “but what is essential is to stop them.” It’s far too late to stop the genocidal crimes committed against California Indians that Benjamin Madley chronicles in An American Genocide; nevertheless, Madley is convinced that it’s still necessary to name them. There are several reasons for this. Scholarly studies of genocide—like actual accusations of genocide—usually steer clear of North America, and Madley wants to change that. He also writes because in a world of genocidal violence, claims of American innocence…