One of my couple of north stars in my life is, in part, a pup named “Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner.” Two days from tonight on June 18th, Oakley will be eight years old. Tonight, he is recovering from surgery — and hopefully can pull through.

How many of you knew that Robert Guest writes (but soon won’t as he is sadly returning to mother England) Lexington’s Notebook for the Economist? And before him, Adrian Wooldridge? Probably not many of you.

Above, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage lays out his views about the Futenma US Marine Air Corps Station fiasco at a CSIS Pacific Forum conference earlier this year.

George Soros said this week in Vienna, “We have just entered Act Two of the drama… when the financial markets started losing confidence in the credibility of sovereign debt.

(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.