Innehållsförteckning för April 8, 2019 från The Nation

A Question for “The Blob” Re Amanda Sperber’s “Terror Out of the Blue” [Feb. 25/March 4]: Lots of interesting facts and statistics on Somalia. Some answers to a few questions. Except one: What is the United States doing there in the first place? I wonder what Matt Duss, whom you profiled in a recent issue [“Who Is Matt Duss and Can He Take On ‘The Blob’?,” by David Klion, Feb. 25/March 4], would say. FRANK L. FRIEDMAN DELANCO, N.J. Generation Climate Strike Re Mark Hertsgaard’s “The Climate Kids Are Coming” [March 25]: Thank you for this article. I am 73 years old, and that young lady Greta Thunberg and those standing up with her are heroes. Shame on us for not stepping up to the plate with them. Theodore Roosevelt…

COMMENT It was an article with no subtlety, only bile. Australian columnist Andrew Bolt, one of the country’s most prominent right-wing voices and a key employee in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, published a column last August with the headline “The Foreign Invasion.” In it, he argued that “immigration is becoming colonisation, turning this country from a home into a hotel.” Bolt’s column was syndicated in many newspapers throughout Australia; accompanying it was a cartoon with racist caricatures of Asians, Muslims, and other new arrivals. White supremacy has very deep roots in Australia. The racism was blunt, and Bolt’s facts were wildly incorrect—yet it was just one of many examples of the mainstreaming of hate that has become routine in Australia. In the wake of the recent horrific massacre in Christchurch,…

Stanford has a sailing team. The University of Southern California has a water-polo team. And people will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fake their unqualified kids’ way into top schools. These were just a few of the many things I learned from FBI agent Laura Smith’s affidavit in the college-admissions scandal that has ensnared 33 rich parents, fascinated millions of significantly less-rich parents, and provided full employment for the nation’s op-ed writers, pundits, and tweeters. The story, much like its protagonists, wants for nothing. It has celebrities: Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, along with the latter’s fashion-designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, have been arrested for scheming on their children’s behalf. It features obnoxious bigwigs like lawyer Gordon Caplan (who said, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the…

They brought her in to sit in the audience. They brought her in to listen. They brought her in to look pretty and keep her mouth shut. They brought her in to laugh at the right times. They brought her in to pour the wine and eat the crumbs. Do they want her opinion? Do they want to hear her story? Heavens no, they want her to keep her opinions and her stories to herself. Or, better yet, not to have any. How is it that they found her in the first place? She isn’t listed anywhere. She hasn’t joined an agency or put herself on a website, but somehow they found her. They always find her. But why did she say yes, and why did she accept the part?…

President Trump’s proposed $4.7 trillion budget for 2020 was pronounced dead on arrival upon its release, given almost no chance of surviving a Democratic-controlled House. But it does reveal the breathtaking scope of his contempt for the working men and women who voted him into office. Trump calls it a “Budget for a Better America.” In fact, it’s a budget for a bitter betrayal. The first page promises to “protect future generations from Washington’s habitual deficit spending.” But tax cuts for the rich and corporations, not deficits, remain the president’s priority. Deficits do, however, provide an excuse for across-the-board cuts in domestic programs. Here too, working people, the disabled, and the most vulnerable elderly take the biggest hits. The president once more calls for ending the Affordable Care Act, reversing…

Dear Liza, I have a friend, J., who was raped many years ago by a respected man in the arts. She never reported him, because she was young and, being in the same field as this much older and professionally powerful man, she thought doing so would ruin her career and her life. She’s worked hard to recover and is still in therapy, yet it is something that has affected her in all of her intimate interactions. Recently, another friend in the same field (who doesn’t know about J.’s experience) told me that a young colleague had confided that this same man had raped her, too. I’m furious, but also concerned about all the young women in this man’s sphere of influence. I know I can’t bring charges against someone…

In Xinjiang, a region in western China about the size of Alaska, the ethnic Uighur population is being tortured, intimidated, and surveilled. Right now, an estimated 1.5 million Uighurs languish in reeducation camps. Facing a growing international backlash, the Chinese government has defended the internments as part of a crackdown on alleged Islamic terrorism and separatism. But one scholar of the region more accurately called the repression “a campaign of cultural genocide.” The French newswire AFP has noted that the massive surveillance machine erected in the region by the Chinese government has become “a major windfall” for security companies. In early February, Erik Prince—of Blackwater infamy—made international headlines again when the South China Morning Post and The New York Times reported that his Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong–listed company,…

I played a pretty big role in a labor fight noted in Erik Loomis’s entertaining, tough-minded, and strenuously argued new book, A History of America in Ten Strikes. Back in the day, I was a “comprehensive campaign” guy—the newish strategic paradigm that was supposed to compensate for labor’s loss of shop-floor power by investigating and pressuring a company’s entire business operation. Loomis describes one such campaign: a lockout of 1,700 members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation (RAC) in Ravenswood, West Virginia, between 1990 and 1992. Marc Rich controlled the RAC, and as the world’s most powerful metals trader, he was nicknamed “Aluminum finger,” a nod to the classic James Bond villain Auric Goldfinger. At the time, Rich was a top target of the FBI and…

74% Students at the nation’s top 146 universities who hail from the richest quartile of American families 27% Students in Harvard’s class of 2022 who have a relative who also attended Harvard $9B Decline in state funding for public two and four-year colleges from 2008 to 2017 28% Average increase in public-college tuition since 2008 $28.7K Average student-loan debt for people graduating in 2017 60% Americans who support tuition-free public colleges and universities…

On March 5, JPMorgan Chase announced that it would end its business dealings with CoreCivic and the GEO Group, two of the largest operators of private prisons and detention centers in the country. According to The New York Times, private-prison companies operate the facilities that hold about three-quarters of all immigrant detainees. While they receive huge contracts from government agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, these companies also secure a significant portion of their funding from private investors. The Center for Popular Democracy reports that JPMorgan has provided at least $254 million in debt financing to CoreCivic and GEO, making it the industry’s largest corporate backer by far. However, buckling under the pressure from a growing immigrant-rights movement, JPMorgan recently told Reuters that “we will no longer bank the…

The scene outside Westminster these days couldn’t be more like a theme park devoted to English eccentricity if Basil Fawlty and Mr. Bean were doing a duet on Parliament Square. Tourists snap photos as people either draped in Union Jacks or waving European Union flags shout obscenities at one another. One woman carrying a sign—the bible says britain’s future destiny is different to europe’s—is being asked to move on by police. Hovering nearby, a few hard-right “Leave” voters insist that if her sign had mentioned the Quran, the cops would have left her alone. Meanwhile, a man with a leave means leave banner adroitly dodges traffic, presenting an American dad with the unenviable challenge of explaining to his kids what Brexit is, or might be. Inside the House of Commons,…

If Congress approves the Pentagon’s full request for strategic nuclear-weapons replacement, this will involve: • A new ICBM to replace all Minuteman IIIs, currently identified as the “ground-based strategic deterrent.” The Air Force expects to purchase more than 600 of these new missiles (400 for active deployment, the rest for tests and spares). Total cost: More than $140 billion • A new fleet of missile-carrying submarines, the Columbia class, to replace the existing Ohio class. At present, the Navy plans to procure 12 of the new vessels, each of which will carry 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Total cost: $128 billion • A new long-range bomber with enhanced stealth capabilities, the B-21 Raider, to replace both the B-2 and the B-52. The Air Force plans to procure at least 100 B-21s,…

ACROSS 1 Member of the aristocracy! (8)5 Note in tub is an inspiration (6)10 Chief of Loyola University caught in pool with commedia dell’arte lover (9)11 Mammal to become narrower, we hear (5)12 Promise a way to fill the blank in CRA_LING (4)13 A bunch of stars in Asia copies Alien (10)15 Eliminate boundaries for most hackneyed ceremonies (5)17 Went along with improved score by Williams (8)20 Caitlin gets addled when taking restricted antihistamine (8)21 Ultimately scratched skin irritation in gutter (5)23 Wicked author Sinclair, beginning to obey the Lord, filled with love (2,2,2,4)25 Request a type of lily that’s clipped (4)28 Park in front of range for sports tournament (3-2)29 See inside cut, and cry (4,1,4)30 Vacation spot to organize once more (6)31 Control is essence of fresh transportation…