Of course this thing would write such drivel:
Posted on 05/08/2025 12:42:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If you have an ounce of historical awareness (and basic empathy), the name “Guantánamo Bay” triggers images of torture and pain. It’s a site where the deprivation of the powers that be has been on full display. But what if Guantánamo wasn’t such a downer? What if it became a “prosperous charter city”? That’s the proposal coming from the most recent group of libertarian tech weirdos trying to rebrand Guantanamo with the help of a little modern-day slave labor.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has been courted by several groups proposing “charter”, “startup”, or “freedom” cities in the United States. Exempt from taxes and regulations, these cities propose themselves as wonderlands where business (like clinical trials) can be conducted without governmental oversight. But their sites aren’t limited to the U.S. alone. In February, one of the groups, the Charter Cities Institute, released its proposal to transform Guantánamo through “governance autonomy, private-sector investment, and immigration reform.”
The group honed in on Guantánamo due to its legal status as a site under U.S. jurisdiction with “minimal local legal complexity.” Compared to domestic sites where the group encounters “multi-tiered hurdles” like zoning boards and city regulations, setting up a charter city on Guantánamo would be a breeze. In its proposal, CCI wrote, “By transforming Guantanamo Bay into a charter city, the U.S. government can catalyze economic growth, manage immigration flows, and project America’s unparalleled capacity for innovation and statecraft — all while requiring no legislation.”
Generally, Trump has been receptive to so-called charter cities and previously suggested using protected federal land to build them. In March, Trump compared their efforts to “past generations of Americans” who “pushed across an unsettled continent and built new cities in the wild frontier.” He also said that building these cities would “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and, in fact, the American dream.”
Trump’s words echo portions of CCI’s proposal, which also pitched a Guantánamo charter city as an opportunity for “undermining Cuba’s community regime.” It all sounds corny because it is. While groups like CCI propose their developments as innovative structures where cutting-edge tech can prosper, all they’re really doing is bringing back company towns. However, Trump isn’t completely off in his comparison. CCI’s ambitions are similar to past generations of Americans who relied on, you know, genocide and slavery.
In its proposal, CCI pitched Guantánamo as a “unique opportunity to rethink immigration pathways while balancing economic opportunity with security concerns.” The proposal went on to suggest housing immigrants at Guantánamo for a “probationary period” while “evaluating their contributions to the local economy and society.” CCI also pitched a “Guantanamo Bay Tech Visa” to fast-track high-skilled workers into “market integration.”
The idea of housing immigrants at Guantánamo isn’t far-fetched. In the early 90s, HIV-positive Haitian asylum seekers were detained at Guantánamo in horrific conditions. Earlier this year, Trump also ordered the expansion of detention centers at Guantánamo. Although Trump aimed to detain up to 30,000 migrants on the bay, fewer than 500 people have been held there, per a New York Times report published this week.
It’s possible to go on for days about how ugly and weird CCI’s proposal is. Trying to rebrand Guantánamo as a place of prosperity while simultaneously proposing modern-day slavery is foul. Immigrants are already dying in detention facilities due to medical neglect and suicide. As Joseph Margulies, a Cornell professor and author of Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power, told the New Republic, “[The proposal] contemplates the creation of a place where human beings exist solely to demonstrate their capacity to participate in a neoliberal experiment. That’s just horrific.”
Beyond the lack of humanity, CCI’s proposal is shaky from a legal perspective. It relies on the notion that Guantánamo is a regulation-free zone, but that’s not necessarily the case. Regardless, CCI and all these charter city bozos should be treated as the losers they are and booed anytime they talk. Instead, these organizations have the backing of tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan, and an administration that’s in full agreement.
Once Cuba is free we should give it back to them. It’s expensive.
If you have an ounce of historical awareness (and basic empathy), the name “Guantánamo Bay” triggers images of torture and pain.No, my "historical awareness" tells me this is where the worst of the worst go, where they are interrogated, where terrorist plans to attack the USA are uncovered, and where we are kept safe from the multitudes of bad guys who want us dead.
-PJ
Of course this thing would write such drivel:
Fixed it...
Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is leased as a naval base. You can stretch that definition with using it for housing refugees, or using part of it for a prison. The treaty does not allow for commercial development. (The base McDonalds is non-profit, with funds going to Morale, Welfare, and Recreation purposes.)
“It’s a site where the deprivation of the powers that be has been on full display”
I’m sure she meant “the deprivation of rights by” but this and other glaring editing errors should embarrass both the writer and the nimrod who okayed its publication.
Better yet, why don't they start with Haiti? It's probably in the worst shape in the entire western hemisphere, isn't US territory, isn't of any use to them, us, or the people who live there, and what goes on there is also none of their blankity-blank business.
Fun Fact: Haiti has been 100% under Negro rule for over 200 years! Way to go, bro!
Want to read some sad history? Go over the History of Haiti. Few Bright spots and lots of Hell. VooDoo will do that to a land, that and corruption.
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