Innehållsförteckning för November 13/20, 2023 från The Nation

CONDEMNING THE SLAUGHTER SHOULD BE THE EASY PART. YET IN THE HOURS and days after Hamas carried out its October 7 attack, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians—including babies and young children—some on the left seemed reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone denounce, these murders. And when Israel responded with murder from the air, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—including babies and young children—most Americans in influential institutions, from mainline Jewish organizations to establishment media to the vast majority of Democratic and Republican elected officials, were quick to justify the carnage. President Joe Biden flew to Jerusalem to embrace the architect of this slaughter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even attending a meeting of Israel’s “war cabinet.” Then he flew home and gave a speech from the Oval Office calling for…

WORKING IN THE AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY STATE is never an easy job for people with ethical scruples—but it has become all the more difficult lately. The Biden administration has given nearly full-throttle support to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which in its first few days took hundreds of civilian lives. This support has been only mildly tempered by rhetorical provisos warning Israel about obeying international law and cautioning against the risks of a ground invasion. But these words are just lip service to human rights. They stand in stark contrast to the administration’s deeds: protecting Israel from international condemnation in the United Nations and ramping up military aid. Many who work in the Biden administration, particularly in the State Department, are experiencing a crisis of conscience comparable to the one…

In late September, The Nation’s publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and its editor, D.D. Guttenplan, met with the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in New York. They discussed the economic crisis facing the island nation, the future of its socialist model, and the impact of the continued hostility from Washington. What follows are excerpts from a much longer discussion available at TheNation.com. On the Revolution Today My generation was born with the Revolution. I was born in 1960 and celebrated my first birthday the day after the victory at the Bay of Pigs. From a young age, we were motivated to get involved in all the opportunities afforded us by the Revolution: to improve ourselves, acquire knowledge, partake in culture, science, and sports, and enjoy access to healthcare. We were also…

AS THE ROLLING INSTITUTIONAL crisis of American political life unspools, a key accelerating force has gone largely unchallenged: radical right-wing military extremism. It’s a touchy subject for many reasons. To begin with, the military has long been linked to the country’s inclusive civic ideals. As an achievement-driven meritocracy, the service is seen as a genuine outpost of equal opportunity, drawing recruits from all class and racial backgrounds and inculcating in them an ethos of camaraderie, accountability, and shared sacrifice. What emerges, we’re told, is America’s best—the enemy of our enemies, a fighting force that can do no wrong. These military myths derive their strength from moments of real interracial solidarity and support, but also from blind patriotism, powerful propaganda, and historical ignorance. Grinding against the military’s self-spun narrative of inclusion…

ON OCTOBER 7, HUNDREDS OF HAMAS FIGHTERS breached the boundaries dividing Israel and Gaza and committed atrocities against vulnerable populations. They targeted non-combatants hiding in shelters. Women. Old people. Children. They rampaged for more than a day before being driven back by Israeli forces and took hundreds of hostages with them as they fled. In response, Israel ordered a full siege of Gaza—cutting residents off from food, water, electricity, and aid supplies. Communications infrastructure has been targeted. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 3,700 people in Gaza, including over 1,500 children, have been killed at the time of this writing. Over a million people have been displaced. All of the above facts are verifiably true and important. But many false or unsubstantiated claims are circulating about the…

DURING THE RACIAL JUSTICE UPRISINGS OF 2020, multiple murals of George Floyd appeared in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, in the US, Palestinian flags became a common sight at Black Lives Matter protests, and in 2021, the official BLM organization issued a statement declaring “solidarity with Palestinians” and opposition to “settler colonialism in all forms.” That year, The Washington Post wrote that BLM’s influence had “changed the US debate on the Mideast,” increasing support for Palestinians among self-identified Democrats. At its zenith earlier this year, that support, according to polls, eclipsed sympathy for Israel for the first time in more than two decades. But the bloodshed in the Israel-Gaza war has fractured the left and the Democratic Party—and revealed deep fissures within the Black community. Historically, radical Black activists…

The Economics of Freedom In his interview with Daniel Zamora Vargas and Anton Jäger for their new book, Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins suggests that Martin Luther King Jr. “moved away from the welfare state as a solution to Black unemployment” in the last years of his life [“Why These Leftists Oppose Free Money,” September 4/11]. This is simply false. For the bulk of the Black freedom movement during this period—King, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, the National Welfare Rights Organization, the Black Panther Party, and so on—demands for full employment and a guaranteed annual income were tied together. Rustin and Randolph’s Freedom Budget called for both a federal jobs guarantee and a guaranteed income for those unable to work. This effort included King,…

ON THE AFTERNOON OF OCTOBER 25, 2021, ZAIN HAQ STEPPED out of his shared apartment in the quiet Vancouver suburb of Burnaby and hopped into a car with three friends. They made their way toward the Vancouver International Airport, feeling excited. About a mile away from the airport, the group pulled over near a park and joined a crowd of around 50 people milling about on the damp grass. This was the 10th day of a two-week-long series of road blockades organized by environmental activists, aimed at drawing public attention to their call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Haq gave interviews to local media covering the demonstration. Eventually, the crowd began to make its way out of the park and into the streets. Chanting through face masks, they…

There’s no good way to admit my envies, to say it’s hardto be close to someone who has what I want—the money for constant childcare, the advance big enough to stand stillfor as long as it takes to get the words out. Tonight what matters most is keeping the conversation going sowe pass the guacamole and the Jalapenos, stuffed with peanut butter, which I am the firstto bite, not quite believing this recipe exists in a restaurant this fancy, something so improvised, like whoever came upwith it was high. But the surprise is how the thick texture of the peanut butter shuts down the spice before it flareson my tongue and I nod to both the banker and the successful novelist that I can handle it.…

Love of the world is so clearly come and go,the way we talk sounds beautiful and sad.You have to try these three words before you cansay the harder thing.The air at evening crumbles into rose flakes.The wind like a child’s breath.This is cement. It’s almost hard now, but when it’s new, it’s soft.If we step in it then it’ll be there forever.To describe is to praise, I’ve always felt that.Two crows fly up and disappear into the depths of the redwood.Talking with Sarah in bed I touch her hair.How often do we use the word “safe” each day? Thanks,a walk sounds nice. When I write thiswinter I trace lines of motion I concludeI’ve lived. My mentor tells me I ammore than a series of inclinations,twilight knotted with dislikes.…

THE LANDMARK CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORIES OF THE mid-1960s—the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968—profoundly altered the character and trajectory of Black American political life. They set the stage for the end of the regime of Jim Crow segregation in the South, the rise of Black-led governance in cities across the nation, and the incorporation of Black Americans into the highest reaches of Democratic Party leadership—all the way up to the presidency. They led to expanded structures of opportunity and upward mobility for Black Americans, including access to upper-status occupations that had previously been nearly unattainable. However, as the current century has unfolded, the dominant tendency in the discussion of Black politics has not only dismissed those victories but…

67 Number of accounts on X (formerly Twitter) found to be part of a network posting false content about the Israel-Gaza war 74% Portion of the top posts promoting false claims about the Israel-Gaza war that came from X’s “verified” users, according to the misinformation-tracking website NewsGuard 795K Number of Hebrew or Arabic posts removed or marked as “disturbing” by Meta in the three days following the October 7 attack by Hamas 87% Portion of Facebook’s misinformation resources that were spent on English-language content in 2021 (Meta has said that it will add more Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking content reviewers) 9% Portion of Facebook’s users that primarily spoke English as of 2021…

“I GET THIS QUESTION ALL THE TIME,” RICKY RICCARDI ADMITTED. THE director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong Center looked at me carefully. “Just last week, when I tried to sum up Louis’s life and contribution in an interview, I went on for 28 minutes.” “Can you give me the five-minute version?” I asked. Riccardi took a breath. “OK. You can name a thousand great instrumentalists or you can name a thousand great vocalists, but he’s the only person you could find who changed the way people played their instruments and the way people sang. Louis does that in a four-year period in the 1920s; by 1930, if you aren’t playing or singing like him, you’re out of work. “He was also born at the right time to be…

IT WOULD BE EASY TO LIST THE CONDITIONS that make South Korea ideal for science fiction. There’s the next-gen Internet, the past-meets-future cityscapes, the ubiquity of plastic surgery. There’s the fact that a handful of megacorporations manufacture and run just about everything, and that the nation’s population is shrinking toward a vanishing point; the country currently has the lowest fertility rate in the world. There is also the fact that two decades ago, South Korean scientists became the first to clone a human embryo, and then cloned a pet Afghan hound. Perhaps most sci-fi of all is the militarized border and what lies across it: the counterfactual sister state of North Korea. Science fiction has long flourished on the Korean peninsula, starting in the early 1900s with translations of H.G.…