Category: General

Jon Weinberg is a Research Intern with the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force.

Katherine Tiedemann is a Policy Analyst at the New America Foundation. The drone wars continue. This morning’s Predator strike in Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s hometown of Makeen, South Waziristan is the 25th this year (compared to six this time last year), and the fourth in the last two weeks to target Mehsud.

On Saturday the Organization of American States (OAS) withdrew Honduras’ participation rights citing their breach of the Inter-American Democratic Charter as the basis for this decision. The charter insists that all member nations abide by democratic principles and outlines repercussions for “unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order”.

In the two weeks since French President Nicholas Sarkozy condemned the all-enveloping burqa or niqab garment as a sign of the “subjugation” and “debasement” of women, words have flown in France as well as Britain and the United States about the proper extent of religious practice in public.

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.