Новости за 07.01.2020

What was the strategic goal of Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian general Qassem Soleimani? This is, on its face, a silly question. Trump’s initial public comment was a low-resolution image of an American flag tweeted from his personal account—cloaking himself in cheap patriotism, as if he were cosplaying George W. Bush. Reporting from The Washington Post and others revealed that the strike on Soleimani was never seriously considered by the military until Trump ordered it—it had been... Читать дальше...

In my high school in rural North Carolina, a plastic table was set up just off to the side of the atrium where we all congregated after lunch every day. Behind that pamphlet-strewn table was a man in the recognizable khaki of a Marine’s service uniform. With a smile that never left his face, he’d reach out a hand and ask about your day. He’d inquire about your classes, whether you played sports, who you rooted for. Then, after maybe two or three minutes of small talk, he’d make his pitch.

As the Trump administration bumbles its way into a new security crisis with Iran, you may have gotten the impression from apocalyptic media coverage and viral social posts that Tehran has decided to pull out of the Obama-era “Iran nuclear deal,” officially known as the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. You might also have the impression that it did this because of Trump’s decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, the major general in charge of Iran’s infamous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, last week. Читать дальше...

New York state’s court system considers its Human Trafficking Intervention Courts—special courts sold as an alternative to jail for women facing prostitution charges—to be a national model for such programs. From Queens to Columbus, these courts share a common presumption: that women engaged in sex work are, in the words of the judges on the bench, “victims, not criminals.” As former Judge Judy Harris Kluger, one of the courts’ prominent advocates, once told the New York City Council, “By and large... Читать дальше...

It was in spring that the frightening laugh of the idiot arrived for Rimbaud. Australia’s own season in hell reached its pinnacle of stupidity a little later. Bushfires had broken out across the country’s eastern seaboard—where most of the population is clustered—in September. By October, still in the belly of the southern hemisphere’s spring season, fires to Sydney’s west and south blew out of control, and the cloak of a climate change–stained sky settled over the city. Sitting in New York, I got regular updates from my brother... Читать дальше...

In the Trump era, two interrelated agencies—Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—have together generated some of the standout horrors of the president’s border and immigration agenda: separating migrant families, allowing children to die in filthy, disease-ridden cages at CBP “processing centers,” and staging shock-and-awe raids to detain and deport immigrant workers throughout the country. Together they form what is arguably the most loathsome wing of the Trump administration—no small feat. Читать дальше...

If you’ve consumed liberal media at any point over the last two decades or so, you’re likely aware of the growing attention to (and outrage over) the lack of racial diversity in: Hollywood movies, tech, journalism, Washington, Young Adult books, modeling, college course syllabi, Forbes’s annual list of billionaires, socialist organizations, museum curators, museum exhibitions, the faces on U.S. currency, podcasts, Trump’s Cabinet, luxury brands, the cannabis industry, and so on. In a multiracial... Читать дальше...

In 2019, Netflix’s Our Planet was widely praised for pushing the limits of the nature documentary genre. Instead of artfully depicting wild animals and glossing over the threats they face, Our Planet repeatedly reminded viewers that human activity was destroying the world depicted on screen. The series’ radicalism had limits, however: Turn the sound off, The Atlantic’s Ed Yong noted, and the series looked just like its peers: a cavalcade of charismatic creatures in magnificent settings. “It’s... Читать дальше...

The journalist Ada Calhoun opens Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis with the note, “You’re not just imagining it, and it’s not just you.” It’s less a dedication than a cri de coeur. Calhoun’s book is a personal matter, about the difficulties of her own middle age. But it also aspires to something larger than memoir. If it’s a truth that the middle years are universally a rut, there are, Calhoun argues, specific ways this plays out in the lives of women of her generation.

President Donald Trump threatened to commit war crimes against Iran over the weekend, less than one week after he ordered the killing one of its top military commanders in an airstrike in Baghdad. The assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who acted as an Iranian version of John le Carré’s Karla for more than two decades, sparked a chaotic backlash. Coalition operations against ISIS have halted, perhaps indefinitely, after Iraq’s parliament voted to expel all foreign troops. Tehran said it would remove all restrictions on uranium enrichment... Читать дальше...