Politico: Emmanuel Macron’s coalition of the willing

Defense ministers of France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark and Estonia will sign a letter of intent in Paris in June, officials told me, pledging to develop a common strategic culture, share analysis and foresight on trouble spots that may require intervention and work to coordinate their forces for future operations.

Macron outlined the idea in his keynote Sorbonne speech on European integration last September, calling for a common European intervention force, defense budget and doctrine for action in contingencies where the United States and NATO may not get involved. France wants to recruit allies that could help share its military burden especially in Africa, where it intervened alone in Mali in 2012 to prevent Islamist militants seizing control of a weak state. [...]

British Prime Minister Theresa May quietly endorsed the initiative at a Franco-British summit at the Sandhurst Military Academy in January but did not publicize the step to avoid antagonizing hard-line Brexiteers in her Conservative Party, to whom any idea of an “EU army” is anathema. She did announce a practical move to help the French in the Sahel region, making available three heavy-lift Chinook helicopters to support operations in Mali.  [...]

Paris also approached non-NATO Sweden and Finland and non-EU Norway about the initiative but they chose to stay out at least initially, diplomats said. Under other circumstances, the French would have liked to include Poland, the most serious military player in former communist Central Europe, but that seems impossible as long as Jarosław Kaczyński’s ruling Law and Justice party stays on its authoritarian nationalist course.

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Scene On Radio SeeingWhite: How Race Was Made (Seeing White, Part 2)

For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

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The Guardian: The future of sex work – a photo essay

In 1995 New South Wales became one of the first places in the world to decriminalise sex work. Against a backdrop of the Aids epidemic and a recommendation to fight police corruption from a royal commission into the state’s police service, sex workers succeeded in lobbying the government for change. [...]

There is still a lot of confusion about the difference between legalisation and decriminalisation. When sex work is decriminalised, that means it’s no longer in the criminal code. Obviously, we are subject to criminal laws just like everybody else. It’s just that our work itself isn’t seen as a crime. When it’s legalised there are still provisions that regulate sex work in the criminal code. Essentially, the many things around sex work – brothels, clients, etc – are made illegal to obstruct the work. These stigmatising and obstructing regulations do not help but hinder sex workers’ rights and safety. [...]

Sex workers aren’t always passive victims. They aren’t always slaves to the patriarchy. They aren’t people who need to be saved or have decisions made for them. I work – mainly – with a community of women and I love the support that comes from that. I find it life-affirming. I define myself as a feminist. But I have a fraught relationship with mainstream feminism. They silence sex workers by refusing to recognise our work and autonomy. And, in doing so, have committed a great act of violence against us.

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The Atlantic: Netanyahu's Strange Presentation on Iran

It is not clear what Netanyahu was hoping to achieve with his presentation. His skepticism about Iran’s intentions and its commitment to the nuclear agreement is well known. Those hoping for a smoking gun of Iran’s cheating on the deal it signed with world powers to curb its nuclear program were likely to be disappointed. The fact that Iran was at one point pursuing nuclear weapons will likely be a surprise to no one—and indeed was a rationale for concluding the nuclear agreement in the first place. Many of the slides Netanyahu showed pertained to the period between 1999 to 2003, when the U.S. has also cited evidence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program, and after which a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate said the program had been shut down. His main evidence that Iran had cheated on the nuclear deal was that it had not fully disclosed the details of its past nuclear programs to the International Atomic Energy Agency as required by the nuclear deal. [...]

As to the Obama-era nuclear agreement itself, President Trump has it “the worst deal in history.” Although his advisers, as well as his European allies, had hoped to persuade him to remain in the JCPOA, arguing it was achieving what it was intended to do—preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon—French President Emmanuel Macron told French media last week, after his visit to Washington, that he believed Trump “will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.” Trump has until May 12 to decide. Netanyahu’s speech could help give him a rationale to withdraw—or, should he want to save the deal, give him wiggle room to reimpose nuclear sanctions without fully withdrawing. [...]

And the Israeli-Iranian confrontation goes beyond diplomacy. Fearful that Iran is seeking a permanent military presence inside Syria, Israel has struck several times inside the country—most recently, apparently, Sunday night, after which at least 22 people were reported killed. There was no claim of responsibility for that strike, though that was not the case earlier this month when Israel struck a military base, the T4 base, inside Syria where Iran is known to operate, reportedly killing 14 people. Israel says Iran uses the base to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. Israel also struck the base in February after an Iranian drone launched from the base entered Israeli territory. Tehran has so far done little to retaliate.

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The Atlantic: Theresa May's Incredible Vanishing Government

Rudd didn’t resign over her office’s handling of the Windrush generation, nor did she resign because of the government’s deportation aims. Rather, she resigned because she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers about the deportation targets—first by claiming they didn’t exist, and then by saying she wasn’t aware of their existence. Both apparently proved to be false—though Rudd claimed she did not see or approve targets for removal, a private letter she wrote to May about the targets in January 2017 refers to such targets directly.

As was the case with previous cabinet resignations, it wasn’t the scandal itself that proved to be the sackable offense—it was lying about it. Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, resigned in November after making false claims that the U.K.’s Foreign Office was aware of her undisclosed visits with Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a family holiday (they weren’t). A month later, former first secretary of state Damien Green resigned because of “inaccurate and misleading”statements he made about the presence of pornography on his office computer. The remaining ministers to have left May’s cabinet include former Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who resigned in November over allegations of sexual harassment, and former Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, who resigned in January for health reasons. [...]

Still, Javid’s appointment marks a major shift in other ways. Not only will he be the first ethnic minority to serve as Home Secretary, but he will also shake up the political balance of May’s cabinet: Though Javid, like his predecessor, voted to remain in the European Union, he is also a self-dubbed Euroskeptic and opposes the U.K. remaining in the EU’s customs union.

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