Turkey has been the most significant outside actor in the one-year-old conflict in Syria, hosting thousands of refugees and providing support to the rebels. But thus far it has not involved itself more directly in the uprising, biding its time as the situation develops.Recent remarks by Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan suggest that this waiting game […]

Late last night, world financial markets looked like toast; Asian markets were in free fall for a while and European stocks were sharply down at the open. (London is closed today for what the British call a Bank Holiday.) Falling futures prices in the US made it look as if we, too, were going to […]

The dawn was anything but golden for everyone but the Greek Nazis today.  Although they got less than ten percent of the vote, it was enough to get seats in Parliament for the first time. The party’s charter declares that “only Aryans in blood and Greeks in descent can be candidate members of Golden Dawn.” Their flag […]

The story anchoring this week’s coverage on Via Meadia has been Secretary Clinton’s trip to China. We previewed the trip early in the week, situating it in the context of America’s recent strategic moves in the region. And as the Chen Guangcheng story began to unfold, we did our best to decode what had just happened—an […]

[Via Meadia‘s man in Istanbul provides the blog with updates from Turkish and regional newspapers.]A firestorm of controversy erupted this week regarding Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s pronouncement in parliament on April 26 that “we will continue to be the owners, pioneers and servants of the new Middle East,” with journalists across ideological lines debating whether this confirmed longstanding […]

It’s been a couple of weeks since we looked at the electoral situation, and since the middle of April, Governor Romney has continued to gain, slowly, on President Obama in the national polls as measured by the RCP “poll of polls.” The slight national swing to Romney was not enough to flip any more states […]

 This photo of a fleet of Ferraris purportedly fleeing to the Swiss border captures the feeling of many rich French people today. The socialist candidate François Hollande has defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy — the first time a socialist has been elected President of France the Mitterand years.This is a good night to keep tabs on […]

The bursting of the housing bubble caused huge financial distress for people all over the United States, and the destruction continues. Millions of people still have negative equity, others have walked away from their homes, and millions of others are coming to terms with houses worth much less than they thought.Over at the Wall Street […]

One of the great tragedies of American life is that our republic was founded and for many years led by white males, many of whom were insufficiently trained and qualified for the offices they held. Not a single one of the so-called “Founding Fathers” held a Ph.D. in political science from a reputable university. Alexander […]

Is cap and trade a crock?Maverick environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus make that claim in a piece that appears at the invaluable NewGeography.com. They point out that CO2 emissions in the US have been in decline since 2005, and that while the recession has ‘helped’, emissions are now projected to decline through the rest […]