It is yet another anticlimax in Athens as yet another austerity deal fails to bridge the gap between Greece and its creditors.Despite the dramatic cuts to government spending negotiated by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Socialist Party leader George Papandreou, leaders in Athens and Brussels continued to lock horns over the debt crisis. Mere hours […]

This isn’t the kind of news we like to receive at the stately Mead manor in glamorous Queens: US gasoline consumption, in the words of blogger Charles Hugh Smith, has “fallen off a cliff.”This is bad news: as Smith points out, deliveries of gasoline to retail outlets track very closely with recessions going back thirty […]

The President of Sri Lanka and the Prime Minister of Pakistan held cordial meetings in Islamabad and talked about deepening their cooperation based on common views about regional issues.India will not be amused.Sri Lanka and Pakistan both have reasons to worry about India’s regional aspirations; both countries enjoy good relations with China. India worries, not […]

Has the Israeli-Palestinian peace process passed its sell-by date? Writing in Ha’aretz, Israel’s liberal daily, center-left columnist Ari Shavit eulogizes the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: [T]he old peace is dead. Really dead. The Islamic revolution in Egypt has removed the southern anchor of that promised peace. The murderous oppression in Syria has neutralized its northern guarantor, […]

A WaPo story points to the cancer eating away at Egypt’s slender chances for a happy democratic transition: the people want bread and it isn’t clear how they will get it.As the WaPo points out, Egypt depends on imports to feed its people.  The Nile isn’t enough anymore; 80 percent of its food comes from […]

The greens that form a key part of President Obama’s base have gotten him in a lot of trouble lately. The president experienced the first major scandal of his “scandal-free” White House due to unwise and ill-considered government loans to a green energy company that wasn’t ready for prime time, and his decision to nix […]

A Native American tribe is suing a host of beer brewing companies, including Anheuser-Busch, SAB Miller, and MillerCoors. Why? The BBC reports: The Oglala Sioux Tribe are asking for $500m (£316m) for healthcare, social services and child rehabilitation.Tribal elders say the lawsuit is a last resort after efforts to curb abuse through protests and policy […]

In a staggered series of local votes, Uttar Pradesh is going to the polls. Early reports from the Times of India suggest perhaps 120 million people participated in the first phase of the regional elections here in India’s most populous state, the highest participation rate in UP since India’s independence.UP’s regional elections will reverberate across […]

Between the high cost of private high schools and the spotty track records of a lot of public schools, many parents during the past few years have been turning to homeschooling as a cheaper alternative for educating their children. From our perspective at Via Meadia, more educational options are always a good thing, and for […]

The White House made an unforced error this week, picking a fight with the Catholic Church that it could not win. Now it is in full damage control mode, looking for some kind of face saving compromise as it backs away from demands that would have forced Catholic schools and hospitals, among others, to offer […]