Beyond Blue Around the Web

Our “Beyond Blue” essays, the culmination of one of Via Meadia‘s overarching storylines, have been sparking conversation. Over at the New York Times Campaign Stops blog, Columbia’s Thomas Edsall compares the essays to Charles Murray’s recent work: Mead’s predictions may or may not prove prescient, but it is his thinking, more than Murray’s, that reflects […]

Oakland Goes to Pot

Something’s rotten in the State of California. The New York Times recently reported that the budget crisis has forced the city of Oakland to look for unusual ways to raise cash. Their solution: marijuana dispensaries. With a declining tax base and poor business climate brought about by the recession, marijuana dispensaries account for a full three percent of […]

French Voters Rejecting Sarkozy

It’s been a bad week for French President Nicholas Sarkozy, with polls showing his rival, Socialist candidate François Hollande, steadily gaining ground. The latest opinion polls show Hollande leading with 59 percent of the vote, nearly the 60 percent necessary to win a head-to-head contest in the first round of elections just under two months […]

Newsflash: America Still Matters

Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai has been working overtime in Washington to polish his nation’s image, as well as defend and smooth over his country’s oil contracts with Iran. Writes the NY Times: India’s determination to continue buying Iranian oil, despite sanctions and growing political pressure from the United States and Europe, has frustrated officials in […]

Occupy, Phase 2: Irrelevance

In a piece entitled “Occupy Movement Regroups, Laying Plans for the Next Phase,” the NY Times gamely attempts to keep the hope for a left-wing counterweight to the Tea Party alive. But no dice. There’s nothing to see here but hand-waving, hyperbolic rhetoric, and vague promises of ill-planned action by career activists: Jumping on a […]

White House Flubs Contraception Compromise

First the Obama administration managed to alienate both its liberal supporters and its religious critics by pushing and then pulling back its HHS contraception mandate. Now the White House has succeeded in hitting the political sour spot yet again by producing a compromise designed to placate the Catholic bishops…without consulting the Catholic bishops. Reports the […]

What Palestinian Unity? Hamas Rift Threatens Deal with Fatah

Another bump has appeared on the road to Palestinian unity. Last week’s agreement in Qatar seems to be doomed. The WSJ reports: A move to unite with the rival Fatah party in a Palestinian government has opened up a split in Hamas.The discord escalated this past weekend as Gaza leader Mahmoud al-Zahar criticized an agreement […]

Greece Riots, Brussels Fiddles, Germany Seethes, Europe Burns

The latest news from Europe is, as usual, not good. The weekend’s riots in Athens were significantly worse than expected, suggesting that the Greek political system is closer to a break point than many understood. Yet on examining the fine print of the latest Greek budget cuts, and taking note of a statement by the […]

Centralization and the Capitalist Market Economy

Not long ago, I was shown at a provincial university the quotas for admission that the faculty of economics had received from the ministry for this academic year, derived from the national admittance threshold points: “Students on basic training 750, students on the masters’ course 120,” and so on. I could hardly believe my eyes. […]

Remember Libya?

Last week, the New York Times carried a front-page story on Libya entitled “Libya Struggles to Curb Militias as Chaos Grows.” If the headline were not enough to clarify the main point, the subheads in the print edition were: “Government Paralyzed” and “Officials Confronted by Rivalries, Grievances and Old Habits.”To my knowledge, this is the […]

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