Quite a number of serious and informed observers predict a spike in mass casualty violence hitting this week in Pakistan.

Kevin Nealer was a Fulbright professor of trade law & policy and is Guest Lecturer at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Markets generally take a “Stop them before they kill again!” approach to Democrats and trade policy.

(Photo Credit: Clfhcks’ PhotoStream) Congratulations to Patrick Cockburn, whose award-winning articles for the London Review of Books and The Independent provide an excellent primer on the political situation in Baghdad. Cockburn manages to explain the trajectory of events in Iraq without getting lost in the weeds of the complex and fluid situation there.

I’m still in Doha, and Dennis Ross was here in Qatar yesterday meeting government officials and discussing America’s course on Iran. Now, there are denials from the Iranian press that Dennis Ross and two other senior government officials, including Puneet Talwar of the National Security Council, are planning a journey to Tehran.

Universities, think tanks, defense contractors, insurgent groups and new media operations all seem to be leaning towards Doha. Part of George Patton’s own 3rd Army Division is based near Doha. Al Jazeera is headquartered in Doha.

Jonathan Guyer is a Program Associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. Although some pundits see the green collar revolution as too good to be true, there are plenty of concrete ways to plant the seeds of a green economy… and Obama isn’t doing that shabby so far.

Of all the evaluations of President Obama’s first one hundred days, I found this analysis by Stratfor CEO George Friedman to be the most compelling.

Joe Klein has written one of the best 100 day nutshell reviews of the Obama administration’s performance I have read. Klein’s take squares almost perfectly with a piece I have coming out in the next few days in World Politics Review — not there yet though.

Joseph Margulies in the Los Angeles Times offers anyone who wants to defend the Bush administration’s embrace of torture a chilling retort. His bottom line: the administration sold out the values Americans cherish most to torture not a kingpin in the al Qaeda network, but a clerk. Margulies writes: First, they beat him.

Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. I encourage everyone to read Julia Sweig’s latest article that is coming out this weekend in the Outlook section of the Washington Post.