As a chilling reminder that some misguided Pakistani Muslims think God wants to see their neighbors killed, an 11-year old Christian girl, possibly suffering from Down syndrome but certainly illiterate, is facing the death penalty after being arrested by police who “rescued” her from a wild mob threatening to burn her alive. This treatment seems […]

Great news! The worst ecological disaster in the history of the United States may be about to be reversed.The American chestnut tree was once king of the Eastern forest. Its sturdy hardwood, its beautiful shape, and its nourishing nuts aided Americans’ construction, crafts, and cooking for hundreds of years. Tragically, a fungus from Asia killed […]

In a move designed to turn up the heat on Assad, President Obama signaled he was ready to intervene in the conflict if Syrian forces use chemical or biological weapons against their own people. The Wall Street Journal has the story: Mr. Obama, speaking at a news conference at the White House on Monday, said the […]

Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, and Thomas Menino (the liberal Democratic mayor of Boston who threatened to block Chick-Fil-A from opening new stores in that city) walk into a hotel…This isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. Last week, this unlikely trinity gathered at a Boston hotel to issue a united call for immigration reform. Doing […]

Nearly twenty years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski famously said, “Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” Uninterested in becoming a democracy, today’s Kremlin has not given […]

As regular followers of Via Meadia will know, WRM is currently in India for the month. He and AI staffer Peter Mellgard will be posting images from the various spots on their trip.

The USS Constitution, named by President George Washington and nearly as old as our venerable founding document itself,  is still going strong. Old Ironsides, as the ship has been lovingly known ever since British cannonballs harmlessly bounced off her sides in  the War of 1812, set sail once more out of Boston harbor, for just […]

The Washington Post reports on a phenomenon that Via Meadia and others have long observed: As the civil war drags on in Syria, the brutalized opposition to Butcher Assad is accepting help from increasingly unsavory elements. The al-Qaeda-approved Jabhat al-Nusra has now joined the rebels as a key fighting force in Damascus and Aleppo. Its men “fight […]

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between China and Japan is heating up. The biggest anti-Japan protests in years erupted in China this weekend in response to 150 Japanese activists who attended a commemoration for Japan’s war dead there, reports the Financial Times: Chinese protestors gathered in dozens of cities, in some cases vandalising Japanese-made cars and retail […]

So far, Asia has been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global economic outlook. Is that about to change? The Wall Street Journal sees some worrying signs: Koreans are buying fewer cars. Chinese consumers are cutting back on new clothes. There aren’t as many shoppers lining up outside Louis Vuitton boutiques in Hong Kong. Bets […]