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Happy Birthday, Guantánamo

Belen Fernandez teleSUR
Gitmo is an offshore penal colony that’s close enough to administer with ease, but far enough away to exist on the margins of legality.

Ambassador Recalled: Airbnb’s Chip Conley’s Mexican Misadventure

Rex Weiner Capital and Main
After the defeat of San Francisco Prop F, Airbnb's Conley celebrated Silicon Valley media’s “Glowing perspective on Airbnb’s prospect,” tweeting, ”With Prop F Gone, Airbnb Is Now Unbeatable.” Less well known has been Conley’s side job, before and during his Airbnb tenure, as visionary leader and chief pitchman for Tres Santos, a mega-resort under construction in Todos Santos, a small Mexican fishing and farming town on Baja’s Pacific Coast.

NC Town:'Ground Zero' in Offshore Drilling Fight

Sue Sturgis The Institute for Southern Studies
Two years ago this month, more than 300 residents of Kure Beach, North Carolina (pop. 2,000), packed town hall to voice their anger with then-Mayor Dean Lambeth's decision to sign a letter supporting seismic testing for offshore oil and gas deposits. The letter was written by America's Energy Forum, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s leading trade association.

The Gates Foundation and the Plunder of African Agriculture

Colin Todhunter East by Northwest
A new report charges the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable foundation, is dangerously distorting the direction of international development, promoting the interests of corporate America against those of ordinary people seeking social and economic justice rather than charity. The Gates Foundation is aggressively expanding the role of multinational corporations in health and agriculture, particularly in Africa and the global south.

Steve Scalise's Problem Is the Republican Party's Problem

John Nichols The Nation
The Republican rising star struggled for two days to get clarity with regard to his appearance at a "white pride" - Ku Klux Klan event in 2002. Initially, his office tried to keep things vague, suggesting it was "likely" Scalise attended. He was a veteran state legislator then, elected from the same precincts where David Duke once ran strong. When it became clear he was not just present but a presenter, Scalise started spinning scenarios that might explain it all away.

Social Democracy in America?

Rich Yeselson Dissent Magazine
Kenworthy thinks that capitalism working at its best—an Americanized version of the Nordic model—would be worth fighting for. I agree.

Police Unions and the Challenge of Solidarity

Roger Toussaint The Chief
When unions serve the interests of the few, they lose their way and their ability to be forward-looking. But one of the better-kept secrets is that invariably, they also quietly become alienated from their own members. Inevitably, if the leadership of the PBA continues to ignore and fail on this challenge, new leadership will be destined to take it up.

The Tragedy of the American Military

James Fallows The Atlantic
The American public and its political leadership will do anything for the military except take it seriously. The result is a chickenhawk nation in which careless spending and strategic folly combine to lure America into endless wars it can’t win.

Listen up, Women Are Telling Their Story Now

Rebecca Solnit The Guardian
Despite the ongoing pandemic of violence against women, the threats online and the harassment on the streets, women’s voices assumed an unprecedented power in 2014, writes Rebecca Solnit.