Barack Obama’s latest effort to seduce Benjamin Netanyahu to stop expanding illegal settlements in occupied territories as a portal into renewed Palestine-Israel talks has collapsed.

(graphic credit: Barrie Maguire) Richard Vague has written an interesting short essay criticizing his fellow American fiscal conservatives for their silence on the Afghanistan War. Vague opens: My fellow fiscal conservatives are letting me down.

This is abhorrent — and Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh, if he wants to be taken seriously in the modern world, needs to get modern. This kind of statement puts him right up there with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on gays, liberals, and feminists.

Many thanks to Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon for responding to my post and tweet @SCClemons. He has amended his piece with the following Tweet: @Danny Ayalon: Too many countries, too little space. “Immediate neighbors” includes Egypt, Jordan and the PA.

Israel Deputy Foreign Minister penned a heartfelt oped in the Jerusalem Post expressing thanks to various international players for their offered and provided relief in the terrible Carmel fire disaster in Israel.

This is a guest post written by Matthew M. Reed, a research intern with the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program. The United States has for decades prioritized the Persian Gulf.

This is a guest post by Anya Landau French, who directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

For those interested in the work and contributions of Chalmers Johnson, I’ll be chatting this morning with National Public Radio’s Worldview Host Jerome McDonnell of WBEZ Chicago. Best to check the schedule at McDonnell’s website.

My powder is dry on the interesting subject that Zbigniew Brzezinski raised on PBS NewsHour. He suggested that in this enormous Wikileaks data dump of largely trivial cables, there are selections of highly pointed and embarrassing material. Brzezinski asks if someone with designs has planted this or selectively leaked to the operation.

For those of you who can never get enough leaked U.S. government documents but are tired of Wikileaks, The Atlantic’s Max Fisher had a must-read scoop from this weekend about a once-secret deal to remove highly enriched uranium that very nearly went sour. He details the never-before-released news that the U.S.