‘It is their greed and the pollution from their products that hurt consumers’

‘Why Big Oil is panicking over accountability’

David Bookbinder at The Hill

Consumers “shouldn’t have to pay twice for the damage done by multinational oil and gas companies — once through the harm their products cause to our health and our planet, and again when those same companies use lawsuits filed by local communities as an excuse to hike prices,” says David Bookbinder. The “oil and gas industry doesn’t like anyone saying plainly that their product causes harm — that they have built a business model on avoiding accountability.”

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‘The illusion of Western peacemaking’

Puhiza Shemsedini at Al Jazeera

It is “hard to understand how one can tell a group of young women whose family members were displaced, raped, tortured, or killed during the war that the problem has to be separated from the people,” says Puhiza Shemsedini. It is “easy for foreign facilitators to do so because at the end of a peacemaking workshop, they would take a cab to the airport, fly home and leave behind the survivors still struggling with a transition from war to peace.”

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‘Why the shadowy money side of cryptocurrency appeals so much to Trump’

Philip Bump at MS NOW

Under this “White House, crypto is to income generation what the presidential pardon power is to justice, something bounded almost exclusively by lines that President Trump himself draws,” says Philip Bump. It’s “unsurprising that the two have been so often intertwined.” There’s a “lot of money to be made in the hustle-friendly cryptocurrency world,” and the “boundaries of the law have never really served as red lines for the creators of Trump University, the Trump Foundation and the Trump Organization.”

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‘On Israel, Trump should echo Reagan’

Anik Joshi at The American Conservative

President Donald Trump has to “stand up to the Israeli government,” and he “should take a lesson on how to do so from none other than President Ronald Reagan.” There was a “time when he held a firm line against the Israeli government,” and there are “lessons aplenty here for the current administration.” It is “unlikely there will be appreciation in all quarters for this, but ultimately these decisions are to be made by the superior partner in the relationship.”

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