Innehållsförteckning för January 27, 2020 från The Nation

Old Struggle, New Politics Thanks for your timely issue on the new politics of abortion [December 16/23]. I thought especially important was Katha Pollitt’s piece on the criminalization of pregnant women [“Personhood Is Punishment”]. I would add only that the phony tears that “pro-life” terrorists shed for the unborn are belied by the fact that these are many of the same people who want to deny support to single mothers struggling to raise their kids—from replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program to cutting food stamps, child care funding, and everything else needed to cope with raising a child, especially on low wages. I know it will sound crass, but the demand should be made that if you’re going to force someone to have a baby, then you…

For the last three months, Australia has burned. Across four states, unstoppable fires exacerbated by climate change ravaged millions of hectares. Some fire fronts stretched across 600 miles. Temperatures exceeded 115°F. Smoke choked Australia’s cities, and the Sydney Opera House disappeared behind a brown haze. Children wore face masks as the air quality deteriorated, leading to canceled sporting events and mail delivery in Canberra, Australia’s capital. At least 25 people died, and many remain missing, not to mention the more than a billion animals and plants incinerated. Thousands of people stood under blood-red skies on sandy beaches, awaiting rescue by Australia’s navy—the largest peacetime evacuation in the country’s history. Christmas neared, the fires worsened, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who once flourished a lump of coal during a parliamentary…

“Trump, former aides said, has burned with a desire to erase Obama’s foreign policy legacy and prove himself a superior Commander-in-Chief.” —The Washington Post I couldn’t abide one simple fact:Obama had bin Laden whacked.So first I took out al-Baghdadi,A really bigger, badder baddie.By making Suleimani dead,In killings I would surge ahead.Obama’s White House stay is done,And I’m the winner, two to one.…

ABLIKIM YUSUF NEVER IMAGINED HE WOULD SEE AMERICA. BORN IN HOTAN, AN OASIS town in arid Xinjiang province, he spent most of his life in China. In 2013 he moved to Pakistan for work, where, until recently, he expected to remain. But on the second Sunday in August 2019, after a whiplash series of life-altering events, Yusuf, a member of China’s Uighur ethnic minority, stood before some 300 Uighur Americans in Fairfax, Virginia, in a makeshift mosque. It was Eid al-Adha, a day of celebration for Muslims. Yusuf, who is 54 and slender, wore a blue-striped dress shirt. Speaking in Uighur, he thanked the group for welcoming him and supporting his recent arrival in the United States. He pledged to make good on their kindness. “I will do my best…

It was a lean-to one could live inso long as it never rained. It was a grain of salt close up, lookinglike a crystal, growing from itself like an outcrop of land. It was a sailopened in a storm. A memory lost. A coin tossed at the wrong time,declaring heads or tails. It had the air of an aristocrat or the stench of a skunk.No matter who bred it, it couldn’t be fair. It wasn’t a buoy. It kept no one up.It had the metallic notice of a gong. It was a thoroughbred raced too soon,or a setting moon, or a button lost or undone. It only had one track andwhen it sped up it was sure to derail. It had a smile for a satelliteor a smirk for a…

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or go to TheNation.com/StartMakingSense to listen today. STACEY ABRAMS MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES M. BLOW NOAM CHOMSKY DAVID COLE MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW BARBARA EHRENREICH FRANCES FITZGERALD ERIC FONER THOMAS FRANK ALEX GIBNEY MICHELLE GOLDBERG AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES SEYMOUR HERSH MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE O’DONNELL RICK PERLSTEIN LAURA POITRAS KATHA POLLITT ROBERT REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH BERNIE SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET TALBOT CALVIN TRILLIN KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL YANIS VAROUFAKIS JOAN WALSH AMY WILENTZ GARY YOUNGE DAVE ZIRIN…

Bill Greider, who joined The Nation as national affairs correspondent in 1999, died on Christmas. It was a joy to work with him. He never wavered in his belief that the greatest promise of American democracy was “plain people in rebellion, organizing themselves to go up against the reigning powers,” as he wrote in The Nation in 2015. Bill published books on globalization, capitalism, democracy (including the bible for small-d democrats, 1992’s Who Will Tell the People), and the role of Congress. Perhaps his most influential book, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987), challenged the conventional wisdom that the Fed should mercilessly fight inflation. At the time, it was lonely to be a Fed critic—but Bill’s insights have been amply vindicated. He was an…

The United States is now effectively at war with Iran. That the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani—not merely an escalation but an act of war—took place on Iraqi soil is no more relevant, or likely to keep the hostilities confined to that country, than the fact that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand happened in Bosnia. When future historians debate the cause of this war, it will surely be relevant to note the hollowness of the Trump administration’s claim that the Iranian general—whose killing was considered and rejected by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama—posed an imminent threat to American lives or interests. Though far from an apostle of peace, Suleimani had no more blood on his hands than the Saudi tyrant Mohammed bin Salman or Philippine President…

Dear Liza, A few months after I graduated from high school, I got pregnant by my high school sweetheart. We’ve always had an on-and-off relationship, but I had a fantasy that we’d get married and raise a child together. He wanted to have the child as well; he had always wanted to be a father. And, of course, I thought he loved me. News flash! A month after I announced my pregnancy, he got a girlfriend. I thought we were dating, but apparently not. I spent the next six to seven months of pregnancy trying to get over him, but we kept living together for the sake of the baby. I realized that I had gotten into this whole mess because I knew he wanted to be a father and…

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP MAY NOT ACCEPT THE SCIENTIFIC REALITY OF climate change, but the nation’s senior military leaders recognize that climate disruption is already underway, and they are planning extraordinary measures to prevent it from spiraling into nuclear war. One particularly worrisome scenario is if extreme drought and abnormal monsoon rains devastate agriculture and unleash social chaos in Pakistan, potentially creating an opening for radical Islamists aligned with elements of the armed forces to seize some of the country’s 150 or so nuclear weapons. To avert such a potentially cataclysmic development, the US Joint Special Operations Command has conducted exercises for infiltrating Pakistan and locating the country’s nuclear munitions. Most of the necessary equipment for such raids is already in position at US bases in the region, according to a…

“everything takes form, even infinity”—Gaston Bachelard,from The Dialectics of Outside and Inside So I died. Then I filled out a form.It asked how I made do & a living& where did I performmy rotations? “We will informthe living of your currentaddress,” said the form. “Here. Wearthis paper gown.” I peeredinside. I formed an opinionof my torso, which was as I’d left it—too solid from living large.But I’ve left out a vitaldetail: I livedin the form of a youngwoman once, like a formal gownadorned in sequence. I was adored& worn, in a fitof pheromonal forms, in& out & in. Leftfor dead, I led existence on.Time wore on. Time warredon. A police officerinformed my fatherof his cardiac arrest, warned meI was next. The officer’s speechwas so formal I fellinto a love. We…