What happened in Bolivia

Evo Morales has stepped down as president in Bolivia following the recent election that he won. He claims that what happened is effectively a coup. In this Twitter thread, Kevin Cashman provides a detailed breakdown of what happened. It looks like a situation similar to what happened in Brazil with Lula, where an entrenched and determined opposition, supported by the media and the Trump administration, have ousted a popular leftist leader who had improved conditions considerably for the poor

Nigel Farage executes a ‘reverse ferret’

After repeatedly threatening to contest every seat that is up for election because he was deeply unsatisfied with Brexit plan proposed by Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson, the leader of the Brexit party Nigel Farage suddenly announced that his party would not contest any of the 317 seats currently held by the Conservatives for fear of splitting the Brexit vote and opening a window for the Remain supporting Liberal Democrats to win the seat. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says that Farage is merely following the orders of his US patron Donald Trump.
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Solitude and loneliness

Hannah Arendt, a Jew who had narrowly escaped from Nazi Germany, was commissioned by The New Yorker magazine to cover the 1962 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. She watched him closely and marveled at how someone who seemed so ordinary could have committed such atrocities. Her accounts of the trial were printed in a book titled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and now to speak of ‘the banality of evil’ has become commonplace.

Jennifer Stitt writes about the insights that Hannah Arendt derived about solitude from her observations during the trial, and concluded that it was Eichmann’s lack of imagination, that “it was his inability to stop and think that permitted Eichmann to participate in mass murder”. Arendt felt that solitude is an important element in our development because it is that that allows us to stop and think and contemplate.
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Former Brazilian president Lula released from prison

The popular leader was released from prison pending appeals and was met with cheering crowds.

In a speech to the crowd, Lula thanked party militants who had camped outside throughout his imprisonment, and attacked the “rotten side” of the police, prosecutors, tax office and justice system for jailing him.

“They did not imprison a man. They tried to kill an idea,” he said. “Brazil did not improve, Brazil got worse. The people are going hungry. The people are unemployed. The people do not have formal jobs. People are working for Uber – they’re riding bikes to deliver pizzas.”

Lula was imprisoned in April 2018 after a sentence for corruption and money laundering handed down by the controversial judge Sergio Moro was upheld by an appeal court. He has always proclaimed his innocence and argued the case against him was politically motivated.

On Thursday, Brazil’s supreme court ruled defendants could only be imprisoned after all appeals to higher courts had been exhausted, paving the way for Lula and another 5,000 prisoners to be freed.

The decision followed revelations on investigative website the Intercept Brasil that Moro had colluded with prosecutors leading the sweeping corruption investigation, known as Operation Car Wash, into bribes and kickbacks at the state oil company Petrobras that imprisoned Lula, powerful business leaders, middlemen and politicians from his Workers’ party and its political allies.

Polls had showed Lula was leading in last year’s presidential election, but the conviction removed him from the race, giving Bolsonaro a clear run.

Bolsonaro then named Moro his justice minister, heightening the sense of injustice. The president appeared to recognize the former judge’s contribution in a speech on Friday. “If he hadn’t accomplished his mission, I wouldn’t be here either,” Bolsonaro said.

As president from 2003 to 2010, Lula presided over an extraordinary period of economic growth and reduction of inequality as innovative cash transfer schemes took tens of millions out of poverty. Even in prison he has cast a long shadow over Brazilian politics – and his release is only likely to widen bitter political divides.

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Trump family grifters have to pay fine and take courses

In a resolution of a case brought by New York’s attorney general Letitia James, a judge has ordered Donald Trump to pay $2 million to charities not of his choosing as a fine for the fact that he used his supposedly charitable foundation to pay for his campaign.

Judge Saliann Scarpulla said Mr Trump had “breached his fiduciary duty” by allowing funds raised for US veterans to be used for the Iowa primary election in 2016.

The money was raised in a televised fundraiser during a Republican primary debate that Mr Trump skipped.

“I direct Mr Trump to pay the $2,000,000, which would have gone to the Foundation if it were still in existence,” the judge wrote, saying it must be paid by Mr Trump himself and should go to eight charities he has no relationship to.

Mr Trump said the case had been resolved and that he was “happy to donate” $2m to the Army Emergency Relief, Children’s Aid Society, City Meals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha’s Table, United Negro College Fund, United Way of Capital Area and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Ms James said Mr Trump had admitted to “personally misusing funds at the Trump Foundation”.

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A town called Anna

Readers my recall my review of the film Green Book (2018) about a black classical pianist and his white driver going on a road trip during the Jim Crow era as part of a concert tour. The title of the film came from a travel guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book that was written by a US postal worker Victor Hugo Green to advise black travellers about what towns to avoid and what places they could stay at and eat. One of the most important pieces of information was to avoid so-called ‘sundown’ towns.

Logan Jaffe of ProPublica Illinois writes about one such small town called Anna in rural Illinois that had such a history and how it is slowly, very slowly, trying to put it behind them, though with only partial success.
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John Denver’s Country Roads in minor key

Thanks to modern technology, one can do things that one could formerly only dream about, such as taking a pop song and changing it from a major to a minor key and vice versa. Major keys tend to be used for upbeat songs while minor keys are favored if you are trying to achieve a more melancholy sound.

Via Rob Beschizza, I came across what such a transformation sounds like when you do it to one of the best known John Denver songs, Country Roads.
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