My colleague Jon Weinberg has posted a provocative piece about Vice President Joe Biden’s comments about Israel and Iran. Weinberg debates how much of a faux-pas Biden’s comments were — and I think that this general line of attack against Biden’s statement is off the mark.
I just stopped at an internet cafe in Perugia, Italy and watched this short Al Jazeera clip done by my friend Clayton Swisher who is apparently embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. One of the most interesting lines in the clip is a comment that chasing the Taliban is “like chasing ghosts.
A reader just forwarded me this New York Times clip on the “confession” of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, an adviser to former Iran President Khatami who has also been an important and talented blogger.
This is a guest note, exclusive to The Washington Note, by James P. Pinkerton — a contributor to the Fox News Channel and policy blogger. Pinkerton is also fellow at the New America Foundation, and contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine.
I woke up in Rome, Italy this morning — the 4th of July — to the very surprising news that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was resigning her position at the end of the month. I don’t know whether this is a July 4th gift — or a warning of a nationally divisive presidential run.
This is a Tehran dispatch from an anonymous student in Iran who has been blogging for The Washington Note and other sites and publications, including the New York Times, as “Shane M.” The dispatch that follows appeared in Salonand at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. A clip from Tehran Dispatch: Basijis Hang Around, Do Nothing. ….
Political journalist Robert Dreyfuss has a terrific survey piece on Iran’s tumultous political scene in the aftermath of recent elections there. Dreyfuss was in Tehran and is now back in Washington.
Here is a several minute long clip of a short discussion I had with Sir Richard Dalton, former UK Ambassador to Iran from 2002-2006 and editor of a new Chatham House report, Iran: Breaking the Nuclear Deadlock.
I have the privilege of chatting with many political, economic and foreign policy journalists from around the world. I generally like almost all of them and appreciate their interest, but some stand out above the others on occasion — and Hoda Husseini of Asharq Al-Awsat was one of these.
Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on “America’s effective unemployment rate” which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people. The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data.
