Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
BRUSSELS — President Trump unleashed a blistering attack Wednesday on Germany and other NATO allies, wasting no time to take the offensive before a week of high-stakes diplomacy on both sides of the former Cold War divide. The series of meetings — beginning with NATO and capped by a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin…
A slow-simmering scandal in Austria has brought into public view potentially disastrous divisions among Western intelligence agencies. As far-right politicians have joined coalition governments in Austria and Italy and taken ministerial positions in charge of security and law enforcement, concerns have grown among intelligence professionals that they will ignore or even encourage the threat of…
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate…
Donald Trump put a climate change denier as the head of the EPA. He pulled us out of the Paris Agreement on climate. He attacked our allies and supported our adversaries. And now the Trump administration—in the name of every American—has threatened Ecuador and other smaller countries over a World Health Organization resolution promoting the…
WARSAW — Surrounded by cheering supporters, Poland’s top Supreme Court justice took a defiant stand on the courthouse steps here Wednesday morning, hours after the government purged the tribunal. She vowed to keep fighting to protect the Constitution and the independence of the nation’s courts. “I’m doing this to defend the rule of law and…
The U.S. is reportedly planning to pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council after clashes over key issues such as Israel. A source told Reuters that the move could be “imminent.” The council will begin a three-week session in Geneva on Monday. Other diplomatic sources told Reuters that the withdrawal was “not a question of…
WASHINGTON — President Trump told President Emmanuel Macron of France on Tuesday morning that he plans to announce the withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Mr. Trump’s decision unravels the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama, isolating the United States…
President Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers Tuesday when he congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his reelection — including a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating “DO NOT CONGRATULATE,” according to officials familiar with the call. Trump also chose not to heed talking points from aides instructing him…
This seems like it should be pretty self-explanatory. A society that accepts “[X] was following lawful orders” as a defense of overseeing and participating in the brutal torture of prisoners is saying, in very clear and unambiguous terms, that obedience to authority supersedes pretty much any other values a decent human being might be expected…
What is Ivanka Trump doing in the White House? We know what she is literally doing. At this moment, she is in South Korea, where she led the U.S delegation to the Winter Olympics and briefed South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the administration’s new economic sanctions against North Korea. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the first daughter has…