Hello folks! Welcome to my articles of the year, 2019 edition! It’s the 5th time I’ve done this (here’s the 4th) , and it’s become a beloved part of my New Year’s routine. To those of you who are unfamiliar with this space (shout-out to the new coworkers who actually clicked through), every year I write about the articles that had a lasting impact or were particularly thought provoking.

The pieces tend to be longer and more substantial in nature. They can vary widely in topic, but this past year tended to be mostly news and foreign policy. …

Bolivia has recently experienced a bout of civil and political unrest. The crisis was brought to a boiling point when the Organization of American States (OAS) published a report detailing irregularites in the latest Bolivian election. Ultimately this and other crucial events led to Evo Morales resigning from his post as the President of Bolivia, and a debate about the true causes emerged. There are two competing narratives aimed to tie these moments into a coherent chronology.

In the first narrative, US influence and a CIA supported military coup toppled a popular, democratically elected leader in Morales for ideological reasons…

Complaints about a flawed extradition law in Hong Kong have morphed into a months-long protests for 5 key demands, including universal suffrage. The Hong Kongese have since been brutalized by the the state government and censored for protesting for their right to vote.

Amidst this backdrop, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted out in support of the protestors, and faced immediate backlash from the Chinese. The NBA failed in this crucial moment to stand up for the humanistic ideals of free speech and suffrage. Instead, they repeatedly capitulated to the pressures of the Chinese government and yuan.

A robust diplomatic apparatus ought to be the first, second, and third lines of defense against abuse of a people by its government. Interventionism is a last resort, and any action pursued in Venezuela by the US must be informed by history and popular will. Still, the option for American intervention is a viable one for limiting the suffering of a beleaguered people.

Writing in favor of interventionism in Venezuela means acknowledging the history of disastrous US policy in Latin America. Extra-judicial American policy has a tortured legacy in the region mostly courtesy of the cold war. Carrie Khan writes…

Civil servants and think tank employees have dedicated their lives to the practice of translating policy from idea to implementation. There’s hard work and dedication that goes into that. Out of that work came the Green New Deal (GND), a resolution cosponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey. Personally, I find issues with the current resolution’s feasibility, and I propose my alternative.

I see the original resolution as aspirational and a point to move forward from, rather than a serviceable path towards environmental salvation. …

Whenever I have talked to California residents to tell them that I’m excited to watch Senator Amy Klobuchar in the 2020 race for president, almost all of them ask me one question, “Who’s that?”. The latest California specific polling, put out by Quinnipiac Polling on February 6th, doesn’t even list her as a potential option. Though we are just under one year from the Iowa caucuses, polling right now is still functionally a name recognition test- that’s why former Vice President Biden and Senator Harris are leading in California.

So who is Klobuchar? She’s a senator from Minnesota who first…

Hello folks, as the articles I included grew from a couple, to a dozen, to now more than twenty, Facebook no longer felt like the right platform to tell you what I read. Also, I want to issue a mea culpa for publishing this so late. I’ll be on time for the 5th one, I promise! Doing this list has been one of my favorite things. It’s made me a more knowledgeable and thoughtful person. I hope people like it.

Anyways, as always, read what you want and ignore the rest. The articles tend to be long and complex in…