We’ve been reading about Germany, where Jews and Muslims could face legal consequences for circumcising their (male) children. In Saudi Arabia, witches are getting beheaded. In Nigeria and Kenya, fanatical “Islamic” groups are murdering Christians in batches, and in Mali, they are desecrating ancient Sufi tombs.So how bad are things here?Fortunately, our blog stablemate Peter […]

Decades after the decline of the local steel industry and other manufacturing industries in upstate New York, a renaissance is changing the face of this once downtrodden region. The Economist reports: [In Buffalo] long-abandoned buildings and unused grain elevators stand along Lake Erie’s shore. General Mills is one of the few companies that still use it—the smell of […]

The New York Times reports that the generation that came of age politically during the Obama administration (18 to 24 year-olds) are much less supportive of the president than their slightly older peers. Those voters with only a dim memory of the Bush years are trending more conservative and are more skeptical about what government can do. Given […]

India’s energy shortage is getting so severe and its ramifications for the country’s future development are so great that the failure of India’s energy policy could undermine America’s new Asia grand strategy. The WSJ reports: Shortages of coal, oil and natural gas will require India to import increasing amounts of high-cost fossil fuels, say energy experts, […]

At this point, the scenario is all-too familiar. A new European country—Greece, Spain, or Italy—gets in trouble. Markets swoon. European leaders spend weeks hashing out a new rescue plan. They meet, hopelessly deadlocked. The world holds its breath until, at the last minute, the new “solution” is announced. Hallelujahs and hosannas ring. Markets recover. As […]

Lately there’s been a noticeable decline in the tone of our usually civil and interesting comments section. That’s partly because many of the recent posts have been dealing with controversial subjects (like circumcision and the relationship of religion to character), but it’s also because of among some posters towards a drift towards more ad hominem […]

North central Africa, the band of territory across the world’s second largest continent, south of the Sahara and north of the rain forests, continued to see religious violence over the weekend. In northern Kenya, “goons” attacked two churches with grenades and guns, killing 15. In Timbuktu, religious radicals with links to Al Qaeda destroyed historic […]

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously lamented that Moses led the children of Israel for forty years of wandering in the desert until he found the only place in the Middle East where there wasn’t any oil.But could Moses have been smarter than believed? Apparently the Canadians and the Russians think so, as both countries […]

It was an essay-heavy week at Via Meadia. The big story was without doubt the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare. Our take: though we don’t much care for the law, the American political system worked and that’s nothing to sneeze at. The President made a proposal, the Congress then in office debated the proposal […]

I review books on the United States for Foreign Affairs; that means every couple of months a huge box of books arrives at the stately Mead manor and I go through piles of books trying to decide which ones to read for review. It’s a lot of work for not much product; the “capsule” reviews […]