Category: General

(Congressman Ike Skelton pays his respects at Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi Memorial, 18 February 2009.

(Photo Credit: The U.S. Army’s Photostream) Blake Hounshell has a must-read piece in Foreign Policy that raises some serious questions about the timing and accuracy of today’s article by James Risen in the New York Times, which claims that the United States has discovered $1 trillion worth of precious metals in Afghanistan.

There are some very high powered US-Japan events taking place this next week in Washington, the most prominent of which is titled “150 Years of Amity and 50 Years of Alliance: Adopting an Enhanced Agenda for US-Japan Partnership” co-sponsored by the Center for New American Security, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and the Ocean Policy Research…

This is a guest note by Fadi Elsalameen, Executive Director of The Palestine Note. This piece originally appeared in Haaretz. Israel’s deadly attack on the “Freedom Flotilla” is proof of how Gaza continues to give Israel a taste of its own medicine.

While conflicts in the Middle East tend to breed polemics and shallow analysis, reactions to Israel’s deadly boarding of the Mavi Marmara may have set a record for polarization.

This post, which originally appeared at The Havana Note, is a guest note by Tom Garofalo, a consultant for the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative.

PIMCO’s Bill Gross calls the U.S. economy the “least dirty shirt.” To borrow from a Flight of the Concords song, you might say that the U.S. is The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room. By virtue of every other economy in the room looking worse and worse, the United States is looking better and better….

A friend of mine wrote to me about the piece below, released yesterday by Brookings, wondering when Brookings Energy Security Initiative Director Charles Ebinger will be spending time with Helen Thomas. We hope Ebinger stays gainfully busy at Brookings — but wow. This came from Brookings!? Very interesting, and an important sign of the times….

Politico‘s Laura Rozen posted a hilarious exchange of notes between the Communication Czars at the UK Embassy in DC and the US Embassy in the UK. Apparently, US Ambassador to the Court of St.

(Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) In the aftermath of the Flotilla crisis, many U.S. commentators have suggested that the United States needs to make clear to Israel that there are limits to the kinds of behavior that Washington can accept. For instance, Center for Strategic and International Studies Arleigh A.