As the bus twists and turns up the Sierra Madre del Sur coming out of Zihuatanejo the first thing you notice are the lush green hillsides. The next thought that logically follows is: wow, there is a lot of water here. But like the coastal ranges of California, the water...

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day. I walked up the hill from my flat to Dolapdere where it all started, watching the preparations for the police parade here...

One aspect of society I always keep an eye out for is the role and place of women where ever I may be traveling at the time. As I noted about Singapore, women...

In what little time I have had over the last two weeks to ponder anything other than the difference between adverbs of modification and comparison as well as the present continuous versus the present simple, I've managed to read a bit about the background on the financial crisis (more...

Thought everyone might find this interesting. Apparently 'Golden Parachutes' haven't been ruled out for failing or failed institutions:

To summarize this, the executives can get a huge bonus or salary or golden parachute, all they have done is not make it tax deductible if it is over $500,000. They still...

Has anyone seen any mention of the infamous Section 8 of the Paulson Bailout Plan mentioned in any major media outlet?

Here's the text just as a reminder:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion,...

Over the last eight years we've been bombarded with denial in so many forms it's hard to keep count. We were told the housing market was just fine. Then it was contained. We were told we'd be greeted as liberators in Iraq, that the invasion and occupation wouldn't last but...

Like Hannes, I am simply blown away by this news. I really don't know what to say, the turnabout is so huge, so significant. It's almost a Nixon-goes-to-China moment. (For reasons of realpolitik I doubt it, however, as Bush just isn't as shrewd a statesman as Nixon, for...

One thing I have never understood about Americans is their love of cars and I am from Texas -- SUV country par excellence.

To me a car is like a prison sentence, once all the real costs are figured into the purchase. First there is filling it up. Easily...

The future doesn't happen in America any more. I can confirm it. I'm sitting on a sidewalk browsing the internet via a free municipal wireless network. There was also an extensive free network in Istanbul....

Get to know this name: Kenneth Foster, Jr. You are going to be hearing a lot of it the next 30 days because I have a personal stake in this matter.

You see, one night in August 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood, was murdered...

Just in case you can't hear the war drums then give this a read. It's a Statement of Policy from the Executive Office on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008. In a nutshell it notes that the Scooter-Commuter, George W. Bush will veto any bill that limits...

I read with sarcastic glee this story from the Wall Street Journal about Henry Paulson's push to make American capital markets more competitive globally. The Paulson plan is nothing more than a hackneyed, trite and timeworn call for focus-group approved terms like "best practices" and the sine qua non...

I finally got around to reading Thomas P.M. Barnett's long story on Africa and Africom yesterday and this afternoon. Having traveled in the region at roughly the same time the US was going 'kinetic' I have to say the article rings true, once...

I read the IAEA interim report this morning with my tea. One thing which is very clear is that in many respects the Iranians are not being cooperative, especially in three key areas:

Iran has not responded to the Agency's long standing requests related to: ·the uranium contamination...

Before I read this rather harsh column by Anne Applebaum I thought to myself, "one thing you'll never hear from anyone in the American foreign policy elite is 'France was right.'" Applebaum doesn't disappoint.

Sure, she says, "[Chirac was] the man who made the right decision about Iraq,...

No single topic had me more concerned in the run-up to war in Iraq than the future of Kurdistan. At the time it was unimaginable that a scenario would present itself in the aftermath of Iraq where we would go to war with Iran. But the possibility of a regional...

I doubt President Bush is drinking again (although with him, anything is possible). That being said Bush probably feels like he is living in a pressure cooker (one of his own making, I hasten to add). And it appears he is not happy with it!

From tonight's uber-insider...

How did such a patently bogus article get through the editors at ABC news?

Seriously, the article has one source, and one source alone that says an Iranian nuke could be possible by 2009. And what does this one source base this completely unrealistic claim on? 1,000 new centrifuges...

Today the BBC reported that war plans for Iran were complete. But the BBC clearly buried the lede on this. It's not news that the US has completed its target set on Iran. William Arkin reported on Iran war-gaming and planning last year in his blog, Early Warning...