Thomas Friedman's reaction to the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton debate can be summarized with one word: "'How?' How in the world do we put a man in the Oval Office who thinks NATO is a shopping mall where the tenants aren't paying enough rent to the U.S. landlord? NATO is not a shopping mall; it is a strategic alliance that won the Cold War...Read Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times. 

Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on the Middle East from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace talks to Slate Magazine about Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Iran, ISIS’s lack of enemies in the region, and whether the Sunni-Shiite split can ever be fixed. Read the entire interview. 

It's often said that the closest interaction many Americans have with other countries' cultures is through food. That kind of culinary diplomacy is particularly common in Washington, D.C., where immigrants from all over the world have cooked up a diverse food scene. Now one scholar-in-residence at American University is using the city's food culture to teach her students about global affairs via a course on "gastrodiplomacy" — using food as a tool to foster cultural understanding among countries.  Read more about Johanna Mendelson-Forman

In a recent blog post, Darren Walker writes: "Certainly, the events of this year have tested any commitment to hope, and to the belief that equality can triumph over indifference and injustice. We are witnessing alarming levels of racism and bigotry in the West. We feel anguished and powerless over the plight of refugees from war-torn regions in the Middle East and Africa. The world over, continued violence against women and girls, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ communities, and other vulnerable people reminds us that inequality can exact deadly consequences." Despite all this, he still has #reasonsforhope. Read his inspiring blog post.

Ironically or not, Thomas Friedman was actually in Tel Aviv. He writes: "I had gone to Israel to report on the Intifada. And I was at Tel Aviv University, interviewing the president. And I had a regular driver who'd been with me there for many years. And I came out of the meeting. And the driver said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center..." Listen to New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman look back on foreign policy after 9/11. Rachel Martin of NPR interviews him fifteen years after the dreadful day.

Ambassador Yousef Al Otiba reflects on the fifteen years since the horrific 9/11 attacks and how,  "sadly, extremist brutality did not stop that day.  From San Bernardino to Yemen, Paris to Bangladesh the reach of a sophisticated and persistent enemy has only grown. The effects of Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran and their proxies reach far into Europe, America and Asia. But in the Middle East, in the heart of the Arab world, we face an existential threat from extremism. Our communities, our families, our livelihoods, our entire way of life are exposed and under constant attack." Read the UAE ambassador's input on 9/11.

Hackers are stepping up their cyber-attacks on American democratic institutions. The Open Society Foundations, the global philanthropy I [Chris Stone] lead, is among many to have been targeted. DC Leaks has posted over 2,500 documents reflecting our grant-making strategies over the last decade, prompting a flurry of press reports from far-right news sites in the US and around the world. Earlier this summer, a shadowy organization called DC Leaks, believed by authorities to be a front for Russian operatives, posted internal communications from the Democratic National Committee. The group also targeted a retired NATO commander, Republican state officials and staffers for several US senators. Keep Reading...

I [William " Bill" Bratton] am a police reformer and have been since I was promoted to the rank of sergeant in the Boston Police Department in 1975. There were many good cops in Boston in those days, but there was also an insular culture that had some racist, brutal, corrupt, and lazy elements. I was motivated to advance in rank to get above the bad actors and try to do something about them. I had a vision of policing, shared by others of my generation, that looked beyond the stultifying bureaucracy, the curdled cynicism and the sheer indifference that characterized a lot of police work then. Read Bill Bratton's op-ed on his last day as NYC's police commissioner. 

It seemed simple enough. The White House wants a surveillance drone to monitor an evolving showdown over human rights in Kyrgyzstan. A member of staff at the National Security Council calls the author, Rosa Brooks, at the Pentagon to tell her to send it on its way. Ms Brooks explains that this is not how the chain of command works in the military. Where would the drone come from? Which job would it no longer be doing? Who was going to pay for it? Whose airspace would it operate from? The incredulous response: “We’re talking about like, one drone. You’re telling me you can’t just call some colonel at CentCom and make this happen?” Read The Economist's riveting review of Rosa Brook's new book "How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon"

The day before the first presidential debate, David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager talked to The Washington Post's The Plum Line. He seemed very confident in stating that we shouldn’t take the polling too seriously at this point, and said he believes that the race just isn’t actually a dead heat. He declared her advantage in the electoral college to be “decisive.” Read the complete interview with David Plouffe.