Новости за 16.12.2020

Last February, I had the honor of being publicly snubbed by Jay Rayner, the fiery restaurant critic for The Guardian, who dismissed my essay about the “crisis” of the American restaurant review as “staggeringly parochial.” Apparently, my essay did not say enough about the British restaurant review. Rayner sketched a broad distinction between the somber American critic driven by “civic duty” with a “respectful and solicitous” tone (not adjectives commonly associated with the Stars and Stripes) and the Brits... Читать дальше...

Mangrove, the first film in Steve McQueen’s five-part anthology series, “Small Axe,” begins with Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), the proprietor of a local West Indian restaurant, walking through the Notting Hill section of London while “Try Me” by Bob Marley and the Wailers plays in the background. He crosses a construction site where Black children are happily running around a makeshift playground comprised of overturned trash bins, construction beams, an old mattress, and a baby carriage. In the background... Читать дальше...

Back in 2010, a little-known section of the major Dodd-Frank financial reform act looked poised to upend the way fossil fuel and mining companies did business abroad. Section 1504, also known as the Cardin-Lugar amendment after its Senate co-sponsors, Republican Richard Lugar and Democrat Ben Cardin, proposed to require resource extraction companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments: essentially, to disclose bribes they might be paying for the right to extract various natural resource deposits. Читать дальше...

A transcript of Episode 22 of The Politics of Everything, “How Pandemics End”

On December 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer to begin distributing its vaccine for Covid-19. The triumphant moment comes on the brink of a grim winter, amid record case levels across the United States, and it is accompanied by countless unknowns. For Episode 22 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Yale University and the author of Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live... Читать дальше...

When Attorney General Bill Barr appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2019, he sold himself as a principled servant of the law. Barr told senators that he would “not permit partisan politics, personal interests, or any other improper consideration to interfere” with the Russia investigation under then–special counsel Robert Mueller. He assured the committee that he would run the Justice Department with “professionalism and integrity” and that his allegiance “will be to the rule of law... Читать дальше...