Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
President Obama is apparently quite annoyed by the fact that his own party is basically pushing against his “big trade deals” (that are not really about trade). Senator Elizabeth Warren has been pretty aggressive in trashing the TPP agreement, highlighting the fact that the agreement is still secret (other than the bits leaked by Wikileaks)….
The Obama administration’s desire for “fast track” trade authority is not limited to passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In fact, that may be the least important of three deals currently under negotiation by the U.S. Trade Representative. The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would bind the two biggest economies in the world, the United States and…
This 2012 photo shows a camp for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Ramon Espinosa/AP) Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes“ That’s just over $83.3 million a house, according to my iPhone calculations. Or around the same…
Judicial Watch has – for many years – obtained sensitive U.S. government documents through freedom of information requests and lawsuits. The government just produced documents to Judicial Watch in response to a freedom of information suit which show that the West has long supported ISIS. The documents were written by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency…
The revelations contradict the official line of Western government on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home. Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through…
(Photo: Photick/shutterstock.com) In 1961, when a KGB counterintelligence officer showed up at a CIA station in Helsinki, Jeanne Vertefeuille held the keys to the office safe. “Responsibility for office funds was part of my normal administrative duties,” the former CIA officer writes in Circle of Treason, the book she co-authored in 2013, “and therefore I could…
DUBAI Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian went on trial on espionage charges behind closed doors in Tehran on Tuesday, 10 months after he was arrested at his home and imprisoned, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. His wife Yeganeh Salehi and a woman described as a photojournalist, who were detained with him in July but…
Defense Secretary Ash Carter held open the possibility of a strategy shift by the White House on Iraq, a few days after recent setbacks in Iraq and Syria revived sharp criticism of the Obama administration’s approach in combating extremist groups there. Islamic State forces last week captured the key Iraqi city of Ramadi and also expanded their reach in Syria. Critics…
Visitors to The Washington Post’s mobile site Thursday afternoon were being greeted by several messages purporting to come from the Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-Bashar al Assad hacking collective that has raided several news organizations in recent months. Upon visiting the Washington Post’s website, readers were bombarded with a series of messages, including: “You’ve been…
date published Jeb Bush at a town-hall-style meeting in Reno, Nev., on Wednesday.Credit James Glover/Reuters RENO, Nev. — “Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread. Mr. Bush, the former…