(Photo Credit: State Department Photo by Michael Gross) This post also appears at The Race for Iran.

Noam Chomsky‘s politics are not my own — but I read him and want to remain aware of his views. I also read Alan Dershowitz, who essentially has become a Noam Chomsky of the right when it comes to Israel policy.

(photo credit: Maxwell Snow) Ali Gharib has just published “Behind Enemy Lines,” a penetrating profile of Nir Rosen, whose supporters and critics alike recognize that he more than any other reporter has an unmatched ability to burrow into the meetings, mosques, networks, and thinking of insurgents who are fighting America and its allies.

(photo credit: PC Sightings) Dear Readers and Spammers of The Washington Note: Behind the scenes of the mostly pleasant, civil, constructive discussions that simmer in the comments section of the blog is a hard fought war against spammers.

My friend Warren Coats, author of One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, hosted a spring party yesterday, and I was reminded of his expertise in advising governments in war torn or besieged states how to create “hard currencies”.

The Washington Note will be live streaming a half day forum Monday morning, May 17th, focusing on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of President Karzai’s visit to DC. The schedule follows below but some of the headliners include James K.

Yesterday, the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy hosted a great program focusing on the state of play in Middle East peace restart efforts and launching the new “Middle East Channel” at FP (which is a joint project of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University and the New America Foundation’s…

A friend in Thailand just sent me this link to the geographic parameters of the brewing dangerous conflict in Bangkok. TWN has a lot of friends and readers in Thailand and hope that everyone stays safe.

My friend and former New America Foundation colleague Paul Cruickshank has been at the forefront of CNN’s investigative journalism on the nuts and bolts of Islamic terrorism. In one of Cruickshank’s recent shows that he did with CNN’s Nic Robertson, they showed how devastating a small bomb on a plane could be.

If you are a Middle East policy junkie, then you are most likely already acquainted with “The Middle East Channel” at Foreign Policy.