When James and Deborah Fallows lived in Beijing, Jim regularly featured on his blog pictures of the weather — well, the smog — from his balcony. This is not from my balcony but it does capture just how thick the smog is in Beijing right now.
On this trip to China, I haven’t yet made it up to the Shanghai Expo, but I hope to go soon. China’s Pavilion towers among the rest and is a testament to the fact that after a few hundred tough years, China is back.
I’ve been in Beijing for a few days, but in contrast to most of my previous trips here, my schedule thus far has been driven more by happenstance and serendipity than planning.
This is a guest note by Eric Schwartz, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration at the Department of State. Schwartz previously headed the Connect US Fund. He sends regular reports of his overseas work on humanitarian matters, and TWN is pleased to share them here.
(click image for larger version) Jonathan Guyer is a program associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and the official cartoonist of The Washington Note. He blogs at Mideast by Midwest. He has just returned from Tanzania. Here’s a cartoon I drew on BP’s mess.
As I write this, it is 3:40 am in Buenos Aires where the Argentine Senate is debating a same sex marriage equality bill.
Tom Toles (c) 2010 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. Pursuing al Qaeda, a.k.a. Moby Dick.
I write this as a political independent who finds strengths and weaknesses in both of America’s major leading parties, but just as I observed during the battle against John Bolton’s Senate confirmation vote to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Democrats often declare defeat when they are ahead, and Republicans declare victory even…
You really think you can dance WIN THIS WAR?? — Anthony H. Cordesman, the CSIS Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy (not really; just hypothetically) Anthony Cordesman is not the warm and fuzzy type. Jack Webb’s Joe Friday in Dragnet was a barrel of laughs compared to CSIS’s most severe, anti-glad handing war strategist.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival 2010, at which I had a terrific time and had some of my own perspectives on policy matters stretched in new directions, I met this fun, woods and water loving dog — named Sugar Bear something-or-other.
