[Note: Via Meadia will publish occasional reading recommendations by Team Mead associates brave enough to let WRM know they still have enough spare time for personal reading.  CFR veteran and Bard research associate Peter Mellgard currently leads the researchers and interns who collaborate with WRM on the blog.]By Peter MellgardI recently finished reading From The […]

Winslow Homer is renowned for his landscape watercolors and prints. Less well-known are his Civil War drawings, which Harper’s dug out of their archive this week. With it being the 150th anniversary of the Civil War this year, these old drawings are well worth a look.

Greens often tell us that the science of climate change is “settled”.  In broad outlines, perhaps — but the details, timing, and the interrelationship of key factors remain frustratingly obscure.One of the hot green disaster scenarios is that melting Arctic ice will reach a “tipping point” in the near future.  The latest research suggests that […]

Maybe its the global economic crisis, maybe it’s all the publicity about the skyrocketing price of college tuition.  Either way, the approach of those September tuition bills is leading to some unusual creativity out there.First came the sugar daddy website story where students are getting to know older adults interested in supporting their educational plans; […]

The last time European leaders worked this hard in August was back in 1914, when they cooked up World War One.They don’t seem to be having much more luck this summer; the more Europe’s leaders talk, the more panicky markets grow.  The FT is talking about the ‘self-decapitation’ of Europe’s financial leadership and they are […]

Back when the humanitarian hawks were still selling the ‘days not weeks war’ in DC, skeptics often made the point that nobody really knew who the Libyan rebels were or what they wanted.Going on five months into the days not weeks war, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Libyan rebels themselves don’t know who they […]

Middle Eastern Christians and their evangelical friends abroad are worried about what the Arab Spring will bring for the future. Molly Worthen has an excellent piece in Foreign Policy about the troubling situation faced by Christians in the Middle East, and the reasons why Arab dictators often get support from American evangelical Christians. She writes: […]

A gripping New York Times story by Sharon LeFraniere this morning details how corrupt local authorities in rural China literally snatched babies from their parents; the babies were then sold to Chinese and perhaps also American families looking to adopt. Yuan Xinquan was caught by surprise one December morning in 2005. Then a new father […]

The Syrian crisis appears to be intensifying on the first Friday of Ramadan.  Reports from Al-Jazeera this morning say substantial demonstrations are taking place in central Damascus, with crowds chanting “The people demand the execution of the president.”  Syrian state TV is showing footage of rubble strewn streets in Hama; when a regime begins to […]

When your economy looks bad, it doesn’t mean it is bad. It just means those awful rating agencies are using the wrong metrics.  Get some better metrics and the problems will magically disappear.That is what Iran has learned from the Europeans, who habitually blame Moody’s and its kin  for pessimistic economic predictions. In Iran’s case […]