Innehållsförteckning för January 7, 2019 från The Nation

The War on War In his review of Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s The Internationalists [“The War Against War,” Dec. 3/10], Stephen Wertheim perpetuates the erroneous notion that the Pact of Paris sought to “outlaw” war. As Wertheim writes, the pact “outlawed ‘war,’ full stop.” In fact, it did no such thing. The word “outlawed” or “outlawry” does not appear in its two substantive articles. Instead, the pact calls for the signatories to “renounce it [war] as an instrument of national policy.” Although outlawing war and renouncing its use might seem to come to the same thing, the distinction is critical. It split the US peace movement in the 1920s, with passionate believers on both sides. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was this country’s…

2.1% How much smaller Britain’s post-Brexit economy would be in 2035 under Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposed plan 7.7% How much smaller Britain’s post-Brexit economy would be in 2035 if no deal is reached £39B The “divorce fee” that Britain will pay the European Union in order to leave (the last payment would be scheduled for 2064) 3.6M The number of EU nationals who live in the UK—about 5 percent of England’s total population 75% The percentage of EU nationals in the UK who won’t be eligible for visas under May’s plan 35,000 The current number of vacancies for nurses in the UK, a job often filled by immigrant workers…

When I first came to live in the United States from the UK, the most common question, particularly from African Americans, was: “Where was it best to be black?” I would usually qualify my response by making it clear that it’s not morally possible to weigh up whose racism is better before using my autobiography as a vehicle to try and answer the question. As the youngest of three boys raised by a single mother with a chronic health condition, I’d tell them, my odds were better as a child in Britain. We had a national health-care system, financial support to stay in high school, and free education all the way through university (which is not the case today). We made it to adulthood without any of us ending up…

I want to be freeTo get up in the morning, peeAnd not come back to bed.We have no future together, he saidDrawing a line in the sandOf my chest, my nipplesRival castles divided by decree.What did he see in the leavesOf his tea, prognosticator,Diviner. Sooth is not so soothingWhen it’s removing what was builtEven temporary, on a beach,Facing erasure, wave after wave.How much farther is the future.Is it a grave, is it a disease, is itLooming is it booming is it bust.We will see each other thereIn the future. Not see as in seeBut see, will we be visibleTo one another or blank, blankAs a blank we fill in laterWith the wrong amount on aReceipt we’re turning inTo be reimbursed. What wereWe worth. What did we cost.In the future will…

A far sunsetwhen we enterisn’t done yetwhen some things getas off centreas the swing set’sswaying censer.Here the landlockedgrainy coloursandbox goes gray,grows a dullersunken tar. Staystill monkey barshipwreck shadowsfrom some agoemerge to mergeon a ripped deckas dark surges.The evening hoursare evening ours,and the surf ison every surfacestrange or estranged.Then the see-sawis severed by shade.There we see/sawthings made and fadeto ocean terrain—now as though neverin motion or plain.…

Noam Chomsky was aptly described in a New York Times book review published almost four decades ago as “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.” He was 50 then. Now he is 90, and on the occasion of his December 7 birthday, the German international broadcasting service Deutsche Welle observed, again aptly, that Chomsky is “arguably the foremost political dissident of the last half a century.” In his life and work, Chomsky reminds us that intellect and dissent go hand in hand, and that the vital challenge of our times is to maintain “an independent mind.” That’s not easy in an age of manufactured consent, but it is possible, as Chomsky proves so well—by continuing to speak, as consistently and agilely as ever, about the lies of our times. When…

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia—with training, weapons, and technical support from the United States—has been waging a brutal war against Yemen. So far, more than 100,000 children have died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease as a result. Since the Saudi strikes began in 2015, Shireen Al-Adeimi, a professor of education at Michigan State University, has been at the forefront of anti-intervention efforts. For her, this activism is personal; she grew up in Yemen, and her extended family remains scattered across the country. Al-Adeimi has launched petitions, written op-eds, given talks, and updated her growing Twitter following on the efforts to end US support for the war. I caught up with her recently to ask about the urgency of the situation. —Chris Gelardi CG: Can you explain a bit…

Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) sent a Nation investigation viral on December 2 when she commented on a tweet about Dave Lindorff’s feature on the Pentagon’s failed audit. The original tweet, by journalist Jordan Uhl, included two screenshots from Lindorff’s piece, which starts on page 12 of this issue but was first published online on November 27. Ocasio-Cortez, seeing the $21 trillion figure highlighted in Uhl’s screenshot, added her own wry observation: “66% of Medicare for All [at an estimated cost of $32 trillion] could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” But Ocasio-Cortez was wrong: The $21 trillion refers to the Pentagon’s undocumented transactions, which include both inflows and outlays. Prominent news outlets jumped on her error, even though Ocasio-Cortez clarified in a follow-up tweet: “This is to say that…

ON NOVEMBER 25, AT A HIP “EVENT LOFT” IN BERLIN, YANIS VAROUFAKIS announced that he’d be campaigning for office in two countries at once. In the spring, the former Greek finance minister had declared his intention to run for prime minister back home in Athens—and in ordinary times, that might have been enough. Today, though, “discontent, xenophobia, and precariousness are on a triumphant march” around the world, as Varoufakis told his mostly German audience. Flanked by a dozen members of DiEM25, the pan-European movement launched in 2016 to “democratize” the continent’s institutions, Varoufakis announced that he would run for a seat representing Germany in the European Parliament. He would make his bid as a Greek, a European, and, you might even say, a Berliner—all to drive home a larger point…

COMMENT French President Emmanuel Macron isn’t a fan of protests. He has mocked union demonstrators in the past for being “lazy” and “cynical” and criticized his predecessors in the Élysée Palace for too easily succumbing to the demands of their critics. His presidency, Macron promised, would stick to its business-friendly reform agenda—even when unpopular. As the former investment banker put it bluntly last fall, “democracy is not in the street.” This is what makes Macron’s decision to cancel an increase in the fuel tax all the more extraordinary. After weeks of protests that have grown violent—with at least four deaths so far and more than 3,000 arrests—Macron has finally conceded to the central demand of the so-called gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests. He has also proposed a modest state-funded pay…

Last week, when I read the story about Donald Trump’s undocumented housekeeper, I was filled with rage and sadness. Rage because it was yet another example of the president doing something he’d campaigned against; sadness because many politicians demonize immigrants to win votes, while relying on their labor for profit. During her five years as a housekeeper, Victorina Morales washed the president’s clothes, ironed his underwear, and cleaned his villa at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. She was even awarded a certificate from the White House Communications Agency in recognition of her performance. But throughout this entire time, she lacked the official papers necessary for her employment. In an interview, Morales told The New York Times that a supervisor had helped her procure fake documents. She…

ON NOVEMBER 15, ERNST & YOUNG AND THE OTHER PRIVATE FIRMS HIRED TO AUDIT THE PENTAGON announced that they couldn’t complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government’s largest discretionary-cost center—which receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations—because the Pentagon had failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DOD’s financial records were so riddled with bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan tried to put the best face on things, telling reporters, “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it.” Shanahan suggested that the department should get credit for the effort, saying, “It was an audit on a $2.7 trillion…

—the word’s on the tip of your tongue(or, as you say it, tong), as we take tea.Waiting for you to speak, I sip mine:Tetley’s tastes of nothing, but I supposeit’s good to know true flavourlessness,the prose of life we sugar over with verse.Ceylon you say—a trochee not an iamb—referring to the drink I drinkwith two spoonfuls at home and, here, none.Though by ‘home’, I mean the housemy parents live in and where I grew up;like, and unlike, them saying ‘back at home’when they intend Sri Lanka, and not Leedswhere they live and I haven’t, not for years.…

ACROSS 1 Article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung pertaining to French population decline (3-3) 4 Fish beginning to drink liquor? That can make a loud noise (4,4)  10 In pursuit of change, God and I are able to accommodate comparatively ineffectual Nicaraguan, for instance (7,8) 11 Puzzles about public transportation (7) 12 Extend final helping of seasoned stew (4,3) 13 Peg left after being once called “Republican loser” (4-2-4)  15 Opposed to Tina’s transformation (4)  18 Placed call in return (4)  20 Where scientists study utterances such as “arf”? (10) 23 Take money off the top, and request something useful during a bank robbery (3,4) 24 Schemer pushed back, getting around chief (7) 25 Outspoken conservatives dismiss half the females among children, creating the trigger for a historic scandal (3,4,2,6) 26…