As Via Meadia has previously reported, with Iran increasingly isolated on the international stage and Syria at war with itself, Hamas is looking for a new backer. Today comes news suggesting that Turkey is ready to play. Reports the Hurriyet Daily News: Turkey will help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip repair mosques damaged in Israeli […]

After a year in which food prices rose sharply in many countries, strong harvests in Europe, Russia and the United States are helping drive prices back down, reports the (subscription required) Financial Times.  Prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and rice are all down.For billions of people around the world the price of basic foodstuffs like […]

The squeeze continues. Since the financial crisis hit, spending cuts have forced officials and planners at all levels of government to trim their budgets, often carving off whole swathes of worthless lean meat in order to conserve and protect that vital bureaucratic fat. One of the latest casualties in Texas may be school field trips, […]

The revolution in American education is moving much faster than most of us understand. Now the Chronicle of Higher Education is singing the praises of a new trend toward achievement “badges” modeled on those earned by Boy Scouts as an alternative to the expensive and cumbersome degree system that could provide education credentials to make […]

The erosion of civil liberties in Turkey continues. Via Meadia recently pointed to the government’s increasingly heavy-handed prosecution and imprisonment of members of the press. A recent Financial Times (registration required) piece brings word that the country’s prosecutors have begun going after the chief opposition leader on very shaky grounds: The move came in response […]

“Head Start” has been the poster child of federal aid to education ever since the Lyndon Johnson administration introduced it as part of the Great Society. And for decades liberals have pointed to it as one of the great advances that the federal government has brought to education, and as evidence that creative social engineering […]

Last week Via Meadia reported on the possibility of enlisting key Asian states to bolster the Iranian oil embargo effort. China chickened out, while Japan announced it is committed to taking “concrete action as soon as possible to further reduce” its imports of Iranian oil. This may take some time, Japan’s spokesman conceded; as Treasury Secretary […]

This is a continuation of the extract of the talk I gave at the University of Geneva in Nov. 2011 on “European Identities.” This part deals with the failure to create an identity at a European level:Let me turn to nation building at the EU level. When we pass from the level of these individual […]

From California, yet another case of fraud in the education system: As the L.A. Times reports, a Beverly Hills superintendent gave his assistant “a $20,000 stipend” and an enhanced car allowance without even so much as asking the school board. And his malfeasance won’t affect his pension benefits, which will kick in when he turns […]

Pakistan’s Supreme Court is conducting an investigation into the memogate scandal that erupted months ago and has since created serious tension between Pakistan’s civil and military leadership. Earlier today, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani fired his defense secretary, Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a retired general. What’s more,  reports the WSJ, Mr. Gilani upped his attack on […]