In the wake of the IAEA’s damning report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, announced US plans to sell cluster bombs to Arab countries, tightening sanctions against Iran’s top (and only) ally Syria and Israel’s public military deliberations, Iran’s opponents are becoming more united while Iran continues to divide.  The WSJ reports: A group of Iranian dissidents […]

Anthony Grafton has a thoughtful piece in the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books that reviews a series of recent books on the university system and draws some sobering conclusions. For most of them [today’s students], in the end, what the university offers is not skills or knowledge but credentials: a […]

More big news on the great game: Australia has just announced plans to begin supplying uranium to India, breaking with a years-long ban on the practice. The FT reports: Australia’s government will push to lift a ban on uranium exports to India in an attempt to put its relationship with the rising Asian power on […]

The world’s eyes are riveted on the car crash in Europe, but the troubles in China could be even larger.  An IMF report out this week adds yet another voice to the chorus warning that some very important pieces of China’s boom rest on shaky foundations.  As the NYT reports: In the 125-page report on […]

As was widely reported by the media both in Britain and in this country, on October 15, 2011 Occupy London (the British imitator of the Occupy Wall Street movement) put up a protest camp in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. With more than two hundred tents in place, the camp impeded the regular activities of […]

As Via Meadia observes the slow burning resistance to the bloody regime of Butcher Assad in Syria, we’ve been bearish on his character and bullish on his strategy.  We think it’s a bad regime that deserves to fall, but that the forces trying to overturn it don’t have the ability to achieve their goals. The […]

Is it a bug or a feature?That depends on how you feel about big bureaucratic corporations taking over American health care, but the New York Times reports that the controversial health care reform act has accelerated the destruction of small medical practices at the expense of large firms.  And if the Times is right, these […]

Add another problem to Rhode Island’s lengthy list — the New York Times reports that the City of East Providence has just gone into receivership due to the usual cause, to wit: an inability to pay its bills. The state government, which is facing serious financial problems of its own, has appointed an overseer to […]

Are the “cheese eating surrender monkeys” complaining about President Obama’s alleged wimpishness on Iran?Apparently so, according to the New York Times.  Israel’s impatience with the Obama administration’s go slow approach to Iran is common knowledge. Less well-known is France’s desire for the same. In a week in which Iran’s nuclear ambitions have once again become […]

Italy has a new prime minister and they have given him an easy first assignment: save the country, fast, before the whole place goes down the tubes. The NYT has a profile of the new PM, Mario Monti: The consensus in Italy is that President Giorgio Napolitano, who nominated Mr. Monti in record time on Sunday […]