Toggle Menu

This Week at TheNation.com: A Weekend Movie Primer; Plus: How to Help in Pakistan.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

August 20, 2010

"The Tillman Story" opens this weekend, and as Greg Mitchell writes in his Media Fix blog, the reviews are in. Mitchell has written extensively about the Tillman case and the film; he previewed the movie and ran the trailer in this post at the height of the McChrystal controversy. If you head out to the theater this weekend to see the film, give his commentary a read first. (And while you’re prepping for a weekend at the movies, you can read Stuart Klawans latest here. Klawans reviews Christopher Nolan’s Inception; Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime; Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon.)

Also this week...

A Nod from Dennis Kucinich on "Extra-Judicial" Killings

It is important to see that someone in Washington is treating "extrajudicial assassinations" seriously. Rep. Kucinich, with six co-sponsors, has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would prohibit "the extrajudicial killing of United States Citizens" and end this horrific breach of civil liberties. We were honored to see that Kucinich cites Jeremy Scahill’s reporting from November (The Secret U.S. War in Pakistan) as part of the rationale for the legislation. Scahill’s reporting is linked from H.R. 6010, which you can read here.

Video: The Public Housing Crisis

Nation contributor Kai Wright was on this week’s The Nation on GRIT TV, discussing the recent desperation over public housing vouchers in Atlanta – and the housing crisis around the country. Wright was joined by housing organizer Tony Romano. There are few needs more basic than shelter; in his reporting for The Nation and Colorlines, Wright has written at length about the struggles of black families trying to hold own to their homes, or even their rentals. This segment is an outstanding primer to the crisis in public housing our country faces today. Watch here.

Video: Is This The Era of "Bad Sports?"

Our Sports writer Dave Zirin was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday exposing some real socialism in our midst: America is socializing the debt of sports, while privatizing the profits. “If public money goes into a team, I think the public should, at the very least, afford tickets, but at the very most have a piece of the team as well," he says. Check out the whole segment here.

Act Now: How to Help in Pakistan

The crisis in Pakistan hasn’t received the attention of other recent disasters, but the situation is more than just a humanitarian crisis – it imperils whatever fragile stability is holding this volatile region together. In this Act Now post, Peter Rothberg runs through the ways you can help Pakistan, where 20% of the country is under water, and twenty million people are homeless. Find out more here.

– – – – – –

Thanks for reading. As always you can keep up by following The Nation on Facebook here, or follow me on Twitter—I’m@KatrinaNation.

 

Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.


Latest from the nation