Innehållsförteckning för January 4, 2016 från The Nation

@thenation.com Lesson From Paris Having just finished “The Climate in Paris” by Mark Hertsgaard [Dec. 7], I think we activists need to follow his advice and take action sooner rather than later. Hertsgaard writes: “Entrenched forces and beliefs must be confronted; solidarity and the common good must take precedence over prejudice and selfishness; our children’s future must matter more than past hatreds.” Toward this end, I think a mass-disobedience day (#massdisobedienceday) should be started to help show our leaders and the undemocratic fossil-fuel corporations that we will not allow any more fossil fuels to be removed from the ground, and we will not accept anything short of an immediate move to renewable energy. These mass-disobedience days can take any form and should come about in a way that can’t be…

In the coming months, a jury will consider the fate of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times at close range. Police originally claimed that McDonald had lunged at officers with a knife, but the dash-cam footage released last month showed no such dangerous move. Instead, the tape showed Van Dyke pumping bullets into the teenager as he lay on the ground. As the case advances through the legal system, Chicagoans are left to consider the political future of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who appears to have done everything in his power to prevent this case from reaching a courtroom. That verdict may already be in: A recent poll showed that a majority of Chicagoans want Emanuel to…

The Network of East-West Women, described in Katha Pollitt’s column to the right, is run by Ann Snitow, currently a professor of literature and gender studies at the New School. Snitow, while not a household name like Gloria Steinem or bell hooks, is a legendary feminist activist and scholar whose new book, The Feminism of Uncertainty, collects several essays written over the last 35 years. Snitow’s elegantly written pieces reveal that she has been debating many of today’s hottest feminist flash points for years. In 1989, she penned an essay called “A Gender Diary,” in which she dissects what being a woman really means—how the category is constructed within feminism, and how it operates in our daily lives. The book is marked by an uncommonly generous attitude toward other feminists…

THE nation HONOR ROLL IS A DECADE OLD. OUR EARLIER CHOICES FOR “MOST VALUABLE Progressives”—like Elizabeth Warren, first highlighted as an academic championing bank reforms, and Bernie Sanders, then a Vermont congressman—are now at the center of national debates and campaigns. So, too, are proposals for marriage equality, ending discrimination against the children of undocumented immigrants, and legalizing marijuana. This year’s list of most valuable progressive individuals, groups, and ideas focuses attention beyond the top-tier politics of a presidential race or the latest bad news. We’re celebrating progressivism that mattered in 2015 and that—if past is prologue—will matter even more in 2016 and beyond. Most Valuable Senator Sheldon Whitehouse The Senate is controlled by Republicans who “continue to deny climate science, dismiss the urgency of action, or exaggerate the costs…

Three days before the first anni-versary of the September 11 attacks, a Muslim cleric arrived at the airport in Portland, Oregon, with his four children, a brother, several thousand dollars in cash, and tickets to the United Arab Emirates. Inside the terminal, federal agents and local cops surrounded them and arrested the cleric, a Somali-born American citizen named Sheikh Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye. The following day, a customs inspector testified in court that two checked bags containing Kariye’s personal items tested positive for explosives. The judge ruled Kariye a flight risk and denied bail. The cleric would spend the next five weeks in custody. Kariye leads Masjed As-Saber, a Portland mosque that had been infiltrated by an undercover informant months before his arrest. The operation was part of a case later…

Bigotry and national security have, sadly, close and old ties in American history. National-security concerns mixed with anti-Semitism delayed our acceptance of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Racism combined with panic after Pearl Harbor led to the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. This year, in the name of national security, we have allowed at least 117 people to die in the desert rather than welcome them across our southern border, and over the past decade have wrenched at least 2 million people from their families with a record-setting pace of deportation. Throughout our history, these kinds of inhumane policy choices have been sold with dehumanizing rhetoric about those we define as threats. So while Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States is shameful, it’s…

Thanks a lot, Republicans. You weren’t in Paris physically, but you still managed to grievously weaken the landmark agreement reached at the global climate summit. On one hand, it is amazing and inspiring that virtually all the world’s governments approved a plan to address an existential collective threat by pledging to leave behind the fossil fuels that are the foundation of modern economies and are controlled by some of the most powerful corporations and nation-states in history. Naming 1.5 degrees Celsius as a goal for the eventual maximum temperature rise was a stunning diplomatic victory for the world’s poor and vulnerable countries. And people of all nations will now take heart that meaningful climate action is possible, which will lend further momentum to the proceedings. Nevertheless, on both scientific and…

1959: Fidel Castro assumes power by leading his guerrilla army into Havana, driving out dictator Fulgencio Batista. 1960: The United States breaks off diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba in response to Castro’s nationalization of US businesses without compensation. 1961: The United States launches its disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and the CIA begins drawing up a series of plans to assassinate Castro. 1962: The Cuban missile crisis nearly leads to a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. 1966: The Cuban Adjustment Act is passed, offering eventual citizenship to any Cuban who flees to the United States. 1980: Castro allows over 100,000 people to leave Cuba for the United States, temporarily encouraging a mass migration due to his country’s economic distress. 1999: Elián González becomes a…

Can it really be December? That means it’s time once again for the annual holiday-donations column, in which I warmly invite Nation readers to send a few dollars—or, heck, many, many dollars—to some particularly worthy groups doing important progressive and humanitarian work. Please do so forthwith, while enjoying a glass of mulled wine and a slice of mince pie. § International Rescue Committee. The refugee crisis in Europe dominated the headlines for weeks this fall, as Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and others fled war, violence, and poverty. The headlines may be over, but the crisis is not. People are still dying on the Mediterranean, crowding along the borders, and struggling to make new lives in places where they are often not welcome. With projects in over 40 countries and more than…

Wolfsburg, in lower saxony, locatedin the northwestern quadrant of Germany, is a bright, low-slung industrial city of 125,000, with the sort of modern look of curvilinear roofs and Cubist glass architecture that qualified as futuristic in the 1950s. The main attraction is a vast, open-air museum dedicated to automobiles, aptly titled the Autostadt, that attracts 2 million visitors a year. The skyline is broken only by four tall, dark-reddish smokestacks. “Wolfsburg” is actually an alias. Once upon a time, the city was called Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben: the “City of the Strength Through Joy Car at Fallersleben,” Fallersleben being the nearest town. The car is better known as the Volkswagen, Adolf Hitler’s “people’s car,” and Wolfsburg is still the company’s headquarters and home of its main factory—the largest single…

16 Number of times Laquan McDonald was shot by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke 351 Number of days that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office knew about the possible existence of dash-cam footage of the shooting before it was released 400 Number of days after the shooting that Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder 0 Number of times Hillary Clinton or any GOP candidate has criticized Emanuel’s role “Any elected official with knowledge that the tape was being suppressed or improperly withheld should resign.” —Senator Bernie Sanders…

Molly Crabapple, who appears on our Progressive Honor Roll for 2015 (see page 14). recently published her acclaimed graphic memoir, Drawing Blood. To celebrate the occasion, we asked her to pick a favorite illustration and tell us the story behind it. This was her response: “One of the things that most influenced my coming-of-age as an artist—though that sounds fucking pretentious—is that I worked as house artist for a fancy nightclub [the Box]. The patrons were these hedge-fund guys who had destroyed the economy, and all the dancers were broke geniuses, and there were dancers who did backflips over chain saws, and contortionists and porn stars, and they were doing these acts onstage that were highly polished and sometimes incredibly cruel to the audience. You would see a girl in…

“The deal with Cuba threatens America’s moral standing in our hemisphere and around the world, brings legitimacy to a state sponsor of terror, and further empowers an ally of China and Russia that sits just 90 miles from our shore.” —Marco Rubio “This president has shown he is willing to do what nine previous presidents of both parties would not: cave to a communist dictator in our own hemisphere.” —Ted Cruz “Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Havana is a birthday present for Fidel Castro—a symbol of the Obama administration’s acquiescence to his ruthless legacy.” —Jeb Bush “Usually [the media] don’t ask the tough questions. Raúl Castro is 80 years old. How much longer is he going to be there?” —Ben Carson “The concept of opening with Cuba is fine.” —Donald Trump, somewhat surprisingly…

In the issue of The Nation published exactly 150 years ago, on January 4, 1866, the editors reflected on “the greatness of the salvation which the year that has just expired has brought us. “The guns that announced the downfall of the Confederacy announced not only that the civil war was over, but that modern society had entered on a new path...[and] that the existing divisions of society were conventional and evanescent.” The editorial denounced those “who believe…that the duty of patriotic men is now to labor to efface all traces of [the war], to consign the ideas which it brought into prominence to oblivion, and to restore the old Southern theories of government and society to their old supremacy in men’s minds, and to fix in them that there…