Insurgency Reporting and the Indispensable Nir Rosen

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(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.

What Hyperinflation Looks Like

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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”.

Debating the “False Religion of Middle East Peace”

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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…

How An American Began to Plot with Al Qaeda

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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.

Clinton, Karzai Define Down Kandahar: “A process, not an operation”

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This is a guest note by Barbara Slavin, freqent TWN contributor and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. Slavin has visited Iran seven times. Clinton, Karzai Define Down Kandahar: “A Process, not an Operation” Experienced politicians are experts at downplaying expectations.

Life is a Performance, Ramin

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Maybe Newsweek‘s Ramin Setoodeh meant to stir up the controversy he did about gays being unbelievable in straight entertainment roles, and maybe he didn’t. But the topic has been busted open, and he and others should use this as a learning moment.