Новости за 03.02.2020

Alice Marie Johnson is free and starring in her first Super Bowl ad. Already, the campaign for her release had made international headlines: a black woman in her sixties, a casualty of America’s drug war who was imprisoned in 1996 for participating in a cocaine distribution operation, a grandmother essentially sentenced to die in jail. Now Johnson will also be known for having her voice and image placed next to President Trump’s own appeal, in the eleventh hour of his impeachment trial, for reelection. Читать дальше...

In early 2016, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cautioned that the dollar’s dominance as a global currency rested, in part, on the U.S. government’s reluctance to fully weaponize it. If foreign markets and governments “feel that we will deploy sanctions without sufficient justification or for inappropriate reasons,” he warned, “we should not be surprised if they look for ways to avoid doing business in the United States or in U.S. dollars.” Lew’s case stemmed from the more fundamental view that... Читать дальше...

Amy Klobuchar began her Iowa campaign nearly a year ago in Mason City, just south of the Minnesota border. And on Sunday afternoon, the Minnesota senator returned to Mason City with a sense of fitting finality as she told a crowd of 250 Democrats, “I didn’t think this would be my last big speech... but I’m going back to Washington this evening for the end of the trial.”

It’s a natural fit for an administration as chaotic and corrupt as President Donald Trump’s that William Perry Pendley, who loathes America’s public lands, was picked last September, and reappointed in January, to manage them. The Bureau of Land Management, which Pendley now directs, oversees more acreage of the public domain than any other federal agency. Thus far, protests from outraged environmentalists—who view the move as “akin to naming a notorious arsonist as chief of the local fire department,”... Читать дальше...

A couple of decades ago, it was easy to recognize a “selling out” narrative: An artist or group labors in obscurity doing good work until a corporation spots them and offers money and fame in exchange for creative control. The “suits” file the edges to make the product marketable, disappointing original fans. Any social critique disappears, swapped with messaging that’s unobjectionable when placed near commodities for sale. Art becomes advertising.

Casting himself as a cross between Willy Wonka and a run-of-the-mill Bond villain, Elon Musk has spent his adult life trying to convince the least cool people in the world that he is the coolest person ever. He spends much of his time pandering to Reddit bros and Rick and Morty fans on social media; the rest is spent bankrolling a series of futuristic transportation endeavors.