As austerity bites, European politics is turning nasty, fast. The smart, cosmopolitan, enlightened Brussels elite and the well-groomed, well-bred moderate national political leaders have completely trashed Europe. The people are angry. Unfortunately, Europeans in the past have made incredibly stupid decisions when they are angry: Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler… the list goes on.Take Greece. “Greek society at […]

For me, this is peak opera time in New York. Last Monday night I saw Verdi’s wonderful MacBeth, sandwiched between a Saturday performance of Rheingold and last night’s beautifully sung and acted Valkyrie. I’m halfway through the first cycle of the Met’s new production of the Ring, with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung still to come. Between […]

Via Meadia isn’t an economic forecasting site; if I knew what the world economy was going to be doing tomorrow I would be too busy making zillions by trading exotic financial instruments the rest of you bozos know nothing about to share my secret insights with the rest of you. (Indeed, one useful thing to […]

Michael Madigan is a Democrat and serves as Speaker of the House in the Illinois state legislature. He is also horrified about the state’s mind-blowing shortfall of $80 billion needed for the state’s retirement system to pay all its obligations.Madigan thinks the best solution would be an amendment to the Illinois constitution that would require […]

Young internet users can be impressively resourceful. China’s formidable web censors are finding it difficult to control online discussions about Bo Xilai, his wife, Neil Heywood, and other aspects of the most exciting political intrigue to hit China in years.As the FT reports, [T]he country’s 500m-odd web users debated the political drama anyway using pictures, code-words and […]

Despite warnings from the United States, the UN, and virtually every major power in Asia, North Korea yesterday went ahead with its planned long-range missile launch. The missile, which supposedly had the capability to reach as far as Australia, fell apart less than two minutes after take-off. It was a serious embarrassment for Pyongyang, which […]

The Bo Xilai scandal that has exposed deep rifts at the heart of the Chinese political system and grown into an international saga of spy-thriller dimensions led this week to the arrest of Bo’s wife under suspicion of murder. Now it is evolving into a larger indictment of corruption in China.The NYT reports that Chinese […]

The story of Gujurat’s 2002 riots is well-known to most Indians: After a train fire that killed sixty Hindus was blamed on Muslims, Hindu mobs rampaged through towns and cities, killing Muslims and burning buildings. In the end, more than 1,000 were killed.Today, the prosecution of 18 accused Hindu rioters ended with life sentences for […]

The image is quite romantic at first glance: Six Buddhist monks have set sail from Vietnam, destined for the chain of rocky atolls and reefs that make up the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. It’s a desolate archipelago with no indigenous inhabitants that plays host to a few scattered military bases belonging to five of […]

Last month, Via Meadia reported that a top Saudi cleric had issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to destroy all churches in the Arabian peninsula. We were happy to note the response of Mehmet Görmez, head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, who eviscerated the Saudi cleric on political, moral, and Islamic grounds. We similarly welcome the recent […]