Good news from the Metropolitan Opera, sort of.In a moment of stark idiocy, the powers that be at the Metropolitan Opera decreed that Opera News, a magazine published by the Met and sent to its patrons and donors, would no longer run reviews of opera productions at the Met.The problem, apparently, was that some reviews […]

India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh is now making the first visit by an Indian leader to next-door Burma in 25 years, even as the pace of Indian investment in Burma is dramatically rising. It is yet another move in the Asian game of thrones.Some people write about the new power equations in Asia as if […]

When it comes to American foreign policy, Via Meadia roots for the home team. We want things to go well for the United States of America, and that means we wish the incumbent and his foreign policy team every success. We don’t hesitate to celebrate the Obama Administration’s foreign policy successes when they get something […]

Will the US and Russia get together to grease the skids for Assad?That’s the latest plan floating around Washington DC, according to the NYT. For both powers this would be a compromise; so far, Washington has been talking only about getting him out quickly while talking of crimes against humanity and trials at the Hague. […]

European shortsightedness and European selfishness were the prime movers in the great catastrophes of the twentieth century. Now in the first grave crisis of the twenty first century the continent’s inhabitants sometimes seem bent on demonstrating how little they have learned. Earlier in the week it was merely a reckless game of chicken between Greece […]

Despite the relative peace in the Balkans over the last decade, nationalism has not taken a holiday since the end of the ethnic wars of the 1990s. The region’s tendency toward xenophobic politics, combined with its history of communist dictatorship, has totally skewed the meaning of words like “moderate” in the former Yugoslavia.So the election […]

Scott Walker’s union battles may be getting all the headlines at the moment, but far away in the Empire State a very different governor is getting into a battle of his own with the unions. Although Andrew Cuomo’s union fights have not been the sort of cage match as Gov Walker’s in Wisconsin, they’ve been […]

I’ve been in Germany visiting Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg and Frankfurt am Main, and from every outward sign, things look great. Cranes are at work building new buildings; late model cars swoop along the autobahns, the restaurants and the shops are full, and tourists swarm in and around the famous sights.But when you talk to […]

The bad news from Europe isn’t the only event casting shadows over the holiday weekend. The news from Baghdad is that the negotiations between Iran and the Group of Six ended in stalemate. Given the effectiveness of the current sanctions against Tehran and the prospect of new, tougher ones coming into effect on July 1 […]

It may be a holiday weekend in the United States and much of Europe (where the Monday after the feast of Pentecost is often celebrated as a holiday), but the world’s politicians, central bankers and financiers are too busy quaking in their boots to bask in the sun.The problem is Spain, which dropped two stink […]