Innehållsförteckning för May 03/10, 2021 från The Nation

ONE OF JOE BIDEN’S FIRST ACTS IN THE OVAL OFFICE WAS TO HANG A PORTRAIT OF Franklin Roosevelt, removing Donald Trump’s choice of Andrew Jackson. Then—against all expectations—he set out to meet the challenges of this FDR moment. In his first 100 days, Biden has shown he intends to marshal the resources of government to address the “cascading crises” we face with the most ambitious agenda in half a century. Biden began with a barrage of executive orders reversing some of Trump’s follies—ending the Muslim travel ban, rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord, pulling the plug on the border wall. He also moved aggressively to take on the pandemic and to address the climate crisis, naming John Kerry as special envoy for climate with a seat…

THE TRUTH IS,” WROTE LORD BYRON TO HIS PUBLISH-er in 1821, “that in these days the grand ‘primum mobile’ of England is cant; cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life.” In the United States in 2021, we have a great deal of cant, but the word itself isn’t well-known. Cant is the false coin of sincerity. In a country where few literate persons can name three living poets, “cant poetical” will hardly be thought a major annoyance. On the other hand, we have plenty of “cant religious.” From the rafters of 1,500 megachurches and across the AM dial in the Bible Belt, it drawls out everlasting prayers for your soul (“Jesus is your personal friend”), but religious cant has…

I FOUND MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER ON MY MOTHER’S SIDE listed for sale in an old newspaper advertisement: “Stephen, 50, sawyer and sailor.” The announcement, headlined with the word “SLAVES” in bold capital letters, stated that he was to be auctioned off at Maspero’s Coffee-house in New Orleans on February 3, 1820, along with the other property that had belonged to Francis Cousin, a wealthy white plantation owner in St. Tammany Parish. Cousin died the previous year, and the executor of his large estate placed a paid announcement in the January 4, 1820, edition of the Orleans Gazette and Commercial Advertiser that all of the planter’s earthly possessions would be sold to the highest bidder: the 4,000-acre farm, the furniture, the two sailing ships, and the 760 heads of horned cattle. Among…

KARL MARX NEVER PUBLICLY REFERRED TO HIS JEWISH background. That background was known to all his friends, and Marx gave no sign of wishing to deny it. But even his daughter Eleanor, who studied Yiddish after becoming politically involved with the workingclass Jews of London’s East End, refrained from mentioning her father’s conversion to Christianity. As its title suggests, Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution, by the distinguished Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri, is not, in spite of the “Jewish Lives” series for which it was written, primarily about Marx’s Jewishness, such as it was. The book gives us, along with a quick and readable account of the life and works, a Marx whom Avineri takes as more useful for what he sees as our nonrevolutionary times. In his view, Marx…

Disability Access Re “Abolish Guardianship and Preserve the Rights of Disabled People,” by Sara Luterman [March 22/29]: I can speak to being in a school for the blind and visually impaired, having attended one for many years in Baton Rouge. Disability service systems are never designed to support persons with disabilities, but are about managing access to scarce resources. DAVID FAUCHEUX LAFAYETTE, LA. Where Is the Joy? Re “The Lavish Pleasures of Natalie Wynn,” by Liza Featherstone [March 8/15]: Ms. Wynn is one of the few public figures who talk about cancel culture in a way that matters to me. I don’t care about Celebrity X or Pundit Y not getting a movie or book deal. I care about leftists going after other leftists, about activist circles getting ripped apart…

The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College has announced that Tim Schwab will share this year’s Izzy Award for his investigative series on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This year’s other winners are Intercept reporter (and former Nation editor) Liliana Segura and the nonprofit news outlet Truthout. The award is named for I.F. “Izzy” Stone, the dissident journalist who was once The Nation’s Washington editor. This year’s judges were Robert W. McChesney, communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Raza Rumi, director of the Park Center for Independent Media; Jeff Cohen, founding PCIM director and founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting); and Patricia Rodriguez, associate professor and chair of the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. In his three-part investigation for The…

TEN MONTHS AFTER GEORGE FLOYD DIED WITH DEREK Chauvin’s knee on his neck, jurors in Chauvin’s murder trial were told that the former Minnesota police officer knelt on Floyd’s body for nine minutes and 29 seconds—43 seconds longer than previously reported. Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell noted that during the first four minutes and 45 seconds, Floyd shouted 27 times that he could not breathe; in the 53 seconds that followed, Floyd went “completely silent and virtually motionless” as he experienced seizures; and for three minutes and 51 seconds, despite one of his own officers informing him that Floyd had no pulse, Chauvin remained atop his unresponsive body. For the entirety of the nine minutes and 29 seconds that the defense and prosecution agree that Chauvin kept Floyd pinned beneath his knee,…

AMERICANS ARE ITCHING TO PACK UP AND set off. Enduring Covid-19 lockdowns and quarantines has been arduous for many would-be globetrotters. After all, it has starved their Facebook pages of content and denied them opportunities to boast about where they’ve just been and where they’re heading next. Sure, Covid-19 may have killed some people’s loved ones, but spare a thought for the Instagram influencers without a means to convey their worldliness. It is no surprise, then, that even though the pandemic hasn’t ended, the easing of travel restrictions has long-suffering American tourists jumping back into cramped airplanes to alight in distant destinations. The numbers testify to this: Easter weekend saw an 800 percent increase in air travel over the same time last year. But what is good for the American…

ERIC TING REMEMBERS THE CHILL THAT PASSED THROUGH THE ROOM when someone coughed during the California Shakespeare Theater gala in March of last year. The annual fundraising event—essential to the theater’s $5 million budget—was celebrating a turning point for the 47-year-old company, where Ting became artistic director in 2015: He would announce that Cal Shakes was planning to move its offices and shop from Berkeley to downtown Oakland, showing that “where we make our home reflects our priorities,” and he would describe ways the company would be collaborating with community partners. “It was kind of a seminal moment,” Ting says. Ting had visited Wuhan, China, only a couple of months earlier to celebrate the 103rd birthday of his great-uncle, and amid the gala’s live music, decked-out guests, and raffles for…

People cycle past a burning barricade that protesters erected during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon’s Tamwe Township in Myanmar on April 3. A Thailand-based human rights group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, reported that the military has killed at least 550 people since overthrowing the civilian government on February 1. By the Numbers 44% Portion of both Latino and Black renters who reported housing insecurity from April to December 2020, up 11 percentage points for Latino renters and 7 points for Black renters since 2019 43% Portion of Latino and Black children who were housing insecure during an average week between April and December 2020 1 IN 3 Proportion of renters who were housing insecure during an average week of the pandemic 47% Portion of renters…

ON THE NIGHT AFTER THE NOVEMBER 3 ELECTION, HUNDREDS OF supporters of Donald Trump filled the parking lot of an election center in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where officials were still counting ballots. Although most networks had yet to call the state for Joe Biden, Fox News had declared him the projected winner shortly before midnight on election night. The Trump voters in Phoenix were furious. “Count the votes,” they chanted. “Fox News sucks!” To Trump and his supporters, the network’s call in Arizona was a rare betrayal: In the previous four years Fox had become so enmeshed with the Trump administration that it functioned effectively as a mouthpiece for the White House. But Trump loyalists could easily confirm their belief that the election had been stolen from the president elsewhere,…

Greetings to you who holds me close.I hold you close because of your beauty(I wanted to possess your beauty)—The beauty which leaves your body that remains.Greetings to you who stares at my face.I stare at your face because of your smile(I wanted to possess your smile)—The smile which leaves your lips that remain.Greetings to you who wakes me from sleep.I wake you from sleep because of your dreams(I wanted to possess your dreams)—The dreams with nowhere to go when you wake.Greetings to you and your luminous gaze.You know that I’m not a thief.I covet only one thing irresistibly,Your heart—I beg you,please, replace my heart with yours. KIM OK…

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