Thanks to online retail and changing shopping patterns, mall rats may soon become an endangered species. The Great American Mall has shaped our culture, and the generation that grew up hanging out there, in profound ways. But malls have been coming under increasing pressure from Amazon and other online companies for some time now: A report […]

After a lot of sturm und drang, the fiscal cliff has been put off for a couple of months. Some modest tax increases, no real spending cuts, and the US lurches forward for another 60 days.It’s not a horrible result, and it seems broadly in line with what the voters said in November: they are […]

Two years ago at this time New York city was paralyzed by a blizzard; thankfully, I was visiting family outside the city when the snow fell and was able to hole up in my house upstate where I teach at Bard College. There was plenty of snow up there, but around Bard people know how […]

About the same time, in early December 2012, that the media went into high gear discussing the putatively catastrophic consequences of a “fiscal cliff” on January 1, 2013, they also reported quite extensively about another looming date, that one a little earlier, on December 21, 2012, when according to some calculations the so-called Long Count […]

Turkey is talking with the Kurds, the FT is reporting. A senior political adviser to Prime Minister Erdogan has admitted that his government has opened disarmament discussions with the jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan. Pointing out that after close to three decades of armed struggle with the PKK neither side […]

“Your first time in a political campaign?” the Senator said. “You poor bastard.” He had his sympathy, however, firmly under control. And properly so, since professors of politics – Woodrow Wilson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan aside – rarely take the knocks associated with the subject they study. The Senator probably considered, and rightly, some bruises, […]

It was one of the nicest New Year’s Eves I can remember; with an old and dear friend I went to the first performance of Donizetti’s opera about Mary Queen of Scots.The NYT opera critic Anthony Tommasini gave a rave review to the Met’s New Year’s Eve performance of Maria Stuarda, and it was eminently […]

With the growing Via Meadia team I’d like to wish our readers a healthy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.  We’re grateful to all the readers who made 2012 the best year in the history of our young site, and we hope to serve you at least as well in 2013.Today, January 1, is the last […]

The big news in Israel last week: a politically marginal Arab woman and left leaning Palestinian activist had her political rights upheld, while a major right wing Jewish political leader with ties to the political establishment faces a tough investigation.An Israeli Arab candidate who took part in Gaza flotilla has been allowed to stand for […]

Terrorists have dug themselves firmly in to northern Mali, according to an Associated Press reporter who made it into and out of remote Mopti with tales of Islamist fighters preparing to stay forever: Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the […]