Like the whole world, Via Meadia has been following the news from Iran, trying to get a sense of its intentions. That’s been tough even by normal Iranian standards. One day, they vow to close the Strait of Hormuz; another, they invite the IAEA for talks. One day, they denounce the West and all its […]

…a nation where witchburning, even if only of “lower caste women” who no doubt have been very offensive in their way, is probably not on the brink of successful democracy. From the Telegraph: Dengani Mahato died after she was severely beaten, doused in kerosene and set alight for allegedly practising witchcraft, Gopal Bhandari, a superintendent […]

Bigotry is bad; how hard is that to remember?Apparently, very hard for a lot of American liberals who have allowed their dislike and suspicion of Republican politics to lower their defenses against cheap and ugly religious bigotry.  Nasty, ill-founded slanders against alleged Mormon plans for theocracy are spewing forth from news organizations and writers who, […]

In a move that will surprise no one, the ruling North Korea’s Workers’ Party announced Monday that Kim Jong-un will formally inherit his father’s place as Despot-in-Chief during a Party conference in mid-April. (With the transmission of supreme power underway, will Kim the younger also take on his father’s title as the world’s largest consumer […]

Regular readers know that Via Meadia (along with Winston Churchill), is a strong proponent of the future economic and energy benefits of faux meat. We are happy to report that the first “shamburgers” should be coming off the grill in October—albeit for the paltry sum of $348,000 each and with a 10–20 year timetable for mass production. But […]

We’ve lost track of the number of definitive, this-time-we-mean-it, final fix to the Greek mess coming out of Europe.  The most recent bailout package announced for Greece comes—as usual—just in time, for the umpteenth time, to avert a debt default in March with a rescue package of €130 billion. The deal leaves bondholders taking an […]

Are modern-day Solons from the GOP romancing the Muslim Brotherhood? A WSJ report on a recent senatorial trip to Egypt sure makes it look that way: Mr. McCain (R., Ariz.) and his delegation of four other senators, three of them Republicans, also hinted at warming relations between conservative American lawmakers and the Muslim Brotherhood, an […]

It’s a dichotomy South Africa has lived since the end of apartheid: The proud standard-bearer for democracy’s triumph in Sub-Saharan Africa is a state beset by chronic, debilitating corruption. The New York Times reports that in a recent audit only 3 of 39 government departments were found clean of corruption. Corruption is a particularly serious problem in […]

We hope the strain of months of watching Greece dance on the edge of a financial cliff hasn’t distracted observers from the portentous developments here in Blue-town, USA.As the NYT reports, Jefferson County, Alabama, has been on the rocks since last summer, when it declared bankruptcy rather than face the $4 billion tsunami of debt […]

Renowned climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada and his colleague Neil Swart have published a study in Nature [subscription required] that concludes that Canada’s oil sands are not as harmful to the environment as previously imagined. The science, once again, is not settled.“Burning the proven reserve [of Alberta’s heavy bitumen] would lead to a warming […]