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Trump’s Russian Laundromat

Craig Unger The New Republic
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

The Model Bakery

Michelle Elvy Atlanta Review
Whatever we do or think we do, whatever we believe or think we believe, whatever great changes occur in the world, writes the New Zealand poet Michelle Elvy, some things just go on as they have gone on.

Let Black Kids Just Be Kids

Robin Bernstein The New York Times
As long as white children are constructed as innocent, we must continue to demand that children of color are as well. The idea of childhood innocence carries so much political force, we can’t allow it to be a whites-only club. We argue that black and brown children are as innocent as white children, we assume that childhood innocence is purely positive. The idea of childhood innocence itself is not innocent: It’s part of a 200-year-old history of white supremacy.

The Tortured Politics Behind the Persian Gulf Crisis

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
Saudi Arabia's puzzling effort to blacklist its tiny neighbor Qatar begs the question of who's really isolated in the Gulf. The attack on Qatar is part of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive new foreign policy that is being led by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. As Saudi Arabia’s “monarch in waiting,” Mohammed has launched a disastrous war in Yemen that’s killed more than 10,000 civilians and sparked a country-wide cholera epidemic there.

How D.C. Grocery Workers Got Their Groove Back

Alan Hanson Labor Notes
To regain lost wages and benefits, UFCW Local 400 used political power, working with union, community, and faith allies to win minimum wage increases and paid sick days in much of the area the union represents. The local also mobilized its membership. Conferences that brought together nearly 300 Safeway and Giant stewards were followed by mass meetings and in-store action teams. The result was a victory and a commitment to keep up the pressure.

Tidbits - July 27, 2017 - Reader Comments: Trumpcare: Play-by-Play from Planned Parenthood; Attempt to Outlaw BDS; Voter Fraud Bait & Switch; Globalization; If Capitalism Failed; Venezuela; Net Neutrality and Herbert Marcuse; CFPB done in your state?; and

Portside
Reader Comments: Trumpcare: What happens when - Play-by-Play from Planned Parenthood; Attempt to Outlaw BDS; Trump's Voter Fraud "Bait & Switch"; Clancy Sigal; Spicer bails; Globalization; If Capitalism Failed (we wish) - Greek workers find solution; Rosa Luxemburg; Yugoslavia's Socialism; Venezuela; Net Neutrality and Herbert Marcuse; High Noon remembered; New Website - What has the CFPB done in your state?

How Times have Changed: Sex, Drugs and Bowling

Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed
From outlawing bowling in colonial America to regulating violent video games and synthetic drugs today, Mark Stein’s Vice Capades examines the nation’s relationship with the actions, attitudes, and antics that have defined morality. This humorous and quirky history reveals that our views of vice are formed less by morals than by power.

Remembering Chief Albert Luthuli on the 50th Anniversary of his Death

Raymond Suttner Polity (South Africa)
One of the reasons why we need to recall Luthuli's life in this time of shameful and shameless greed is that he consciously emphasised what he called the "gospel of service". Even if the ANC chooses to neglect the memory and legacies of Luthuli we, the citizens of South Africa need to draw on these. Luthuli was the first non-racial leader in South Africa, the first African to have a following amongst whites.

Unions Rip Senate’s Obamacare-Repeal Move

Seven Wishnia Labor Press
"Several American labor unions reacted angrily to the Senate’s vote July 25 to take yet another crack at dismantling Obamacare. AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the vote “morally indefensible,” while Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers said it was “cruel and heartless.”