Dear Progressive Reader,

On January 24, the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that it was moving the pointer on its three-quarter-century-old clock to an unprecedented ninety seconds before midnight. As I expained in a 2018 article for clock’s seventieth anniversary, “The minute-to-midnight rankings are set by a board of nineteen scientists and scholars who evaluate the risk of nuclear catastrophe by looking at world events and trends.” This year that board has determined to move the hands forward, “largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.” Further, they note, “The war’s effects are not limited to an increase in nuclear danger; they also undermine global efforts to combat climate change.” The clock, originally designed to reflect the danger of nuclear catastrophe, began including climate change in its deliberations in 2007. It its 2020 assessment, the board also added consideration of biological threats such as COVID-19 and other potential pandemics to the calculation. Just six days later, the United Nations would term COVID-19 a “global emergency.”

Even as the iconic clock called out its alarm at the potential dangers of the current war in Ukraine—“The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win.”—the Biden Administration broke with past policy and announced that it would send thirty-one of the high-end M1 Abrams tanks into the conflict. As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies write this week, “While both [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholtz and [U.S. President Joe] Biden portray these moves as proof that the West is unified in providing more military support for Ukraine, pressure for negotiations will surely mount as European civil society continues to mobilize against the war and military experts assert that a victory on the battlefield is unlikely.” It can only be hoped that the pressures of civil society both here in the United States and around the globe will have an impact on the policymakers. As Benjamin and Davies note, “Most of the people of the world would breathe a sigh of relief to see progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, and to see the United States and Russia working together to reduce the existential dangers of their militarism and hostility. This should lead to improved international cooperation on other serious crises facing the world in this century—and may even start to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock by making the world a safer place for us all.”

Yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords that ultimately ended the war in Vietnam. Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, a historian at Hofstra University, notes in her new book, Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger and the Wars in Southeast Asia, “The most preposterous ‘cover-up’ was the claim that this peace agreement had been done in harmony with the government of South Vietnam.” But perhaps even more damning in the eyes of world history, she goes on to point out in the following chapter, is that “America’s Indochina war did not end on January 27, 1973. Once a bombing halt was instituted for Vietnam itself, the White House directed that the B-52s and fighter jets be instructed to strike targets in Laos and Cambodia.” In a conversation this weekend for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft on the book and the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Accords, Eisenberg confirms that it was the domestic pressure of the peace movement that brought then-President Richard Nixon and his main adviser Henry Kissinger to the table in Paris. “Nixon had no choice,” she says, it was because of the “immense domestic pressure that had built in this country to get out and stop the war.” Hopefully we can see the effecs of this sort of public pressure again. As the writers of the Bulletin’s 2023 statement on the Doomsday Clock clearly state, “Finding a path to serious peace negotiations could go a long way toward reducing the risk of escalation. In this time of unprecedented global danger, concerted action is required, and every second counts.”

Elsewhere on our website this week, Jeff Abbott reports on growing tensions between Guatemala and Colombia based on Guatemala’s assault on anti-corruption efforts. Baylor Spears describes the scene at the flagship event for the National Women’s March last Sunday on the fiftieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Linda Wiggins-Chavis looks at the ways that Florida is politicizing Black lives in its assault on “woke” curriculum in schools. And Eleanor J. Bader reviews a new book, Stayed on Freedom, that chronicles a little known story of the 1960s and 1970s movements for civil rights and Black power.

Victory Navasky, longtime editor and later publisher of The Nation passed away this week at the age of ninety. Navasky was an icon of left media, and an insipration to a generation of progressive journalists. His years (1978-2005) as editor and/or publisher at The Nation spanned five presidential terms from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush—a period that included two major wars in the Persian Gulf, and many other examples of U.S. military excess. Looking back on one of those wars in 2008 with Bill Moyers, Navasky and colleague Christopher Cerf pointed out that Dick Cheney was right, “He worried . . . we could end up as an occupying power and be there for years. He was very prescient.”

When I came to the job of publisher here at The Progressive, the first book I picked up was The Art of Magazines, edited by Navasky and Evan Cornog. (My favorite chapter is the inspiring look at “Fact-Checking at The New Yorker” by the recently retired dean of the field, Peter Canby.) In the book’s introduction, Navasky and Cornog note, “magazines as a class, be they magazines of ideas, journals of opinion, newsweeklies, or niche publications . . . by definition reflect the values and tensions of the culture and society they help to define.”

On Monday January 30 at noon, if you are in Madison, there will be a ceremony at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Secretary of State Doug La Follette (a distant cousin of our founder Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette) has commissioned a plaque to be placed at the base of the bust of Fighting Bob which sits in the Rotunda. There has been no information previously on the bust about who this legendary citizen of the state was, or what he accomplished. La Follete approached other state officials about getting such a plaque made, and they said they would not fund it, so he set out to raise the money himself. “If the state government can't afford a couple thousand dollars for the most important political figure in our history, whatever, that's water under the bridge,” he told the Associated Press in an interview. The plaque was crafted by Pechmann Memorials, the same firm that did the restoration of the grave markers of Bob and Belle Case La Follete for an event organized by The Progressive in 2021. At Monday’s ceremony, I will be speaking about Fighting Bob and Belle and how our magazine came to be in January 1909.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. - Please join us for an online book discussion with Frank Emspak and his new memoir Troublemaker: Saying No to Power, on Thursday February 2 at 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. The event will include panelists Steve Early, (free-lance journalist and the author or co-author of five books about labor, politics, or veterans issues), Alice Herman (labor reporter whose work has appeared in The Progressive, In These Times, and other outlets), and Norman Stockwell (former Board member of Workers Independent News and publisher of The Progressive magazine), along with questions from the audience. A link to join the online discussion will follow in an email next week.

P.P.S. - The new 2023 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now available. You can order one online and get it mailed in time for the holidays.

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