The Bo Xilai saga continues: The latest news concerns the mysterious death of a British businessman with close ties to Bo, the former high-ranking Communist party official from Chongqing who was purged earlier this month. The businessman, Neil Haywood, had known Bo since the early 1990s, and they were said to be close friends.According to […]

The Fed’s controversial “Quantitative Easing” policies are only the most prominent of a number of similar actions by central banks around the world. Many countries’ central banks are pursuing a policy of easy money and low interest rates in an attempt to boost moribund economies and low investment. Yet at a recent meeting of central […]

As regular readers know, we at Via Meadia like to keep tabs on trolls and their exploits across America. We last spotted an anti-colonialist brood infiltrating the Harvard curriculum. Today, during the course of some very serious research, Team Mead found them on Wikipedia — specifically, the entry on the city of Syracuse: Trolls The […]

Is China’s great deceleration beginning? American businesses think so. In a survey cited in the Wall Street Journal, a 45 percent plurality of American businesses see slowing growth in China as the greatest risk to their interests in that country in 2012. This number is considerably higher than in past years.This finding wasn’t the only bit of bad news […]

President Obama has just completed an important ritual of an American presidency: on this third visit to South Korea as president he has visited the demarcation line between North and South Korea, peering into the windswept, desolate north from behind bulletproof glass.What some in the press hailed as a unique triumph of Obaman diplomacy—actually, yet […]

As the New York Times reports, Iraq is preparing to re-enter the world of Arab diplomacy by hosting this week’s Arab League meeting in Baghdad. It is the first major international gathering in Baghdad in many years; Saddam Hussein had been ostracized in the Arab world since his invasion of Kuwait.Iraq has a lot riding […]

NY Times columnist Nick Kristof makes quite a claim in the opening of his latest piece, entitled “The False Debate About Attacking Iran“: I wonder if we in the news media aren’t inadvertently leaving the impression that there is a genuine debate among experts about whether an Israeli military strike on Iran makes sense this […]

Via Meadia wishes its readers a happy belated… World Water Day?We’re the first to admit that, like many other UN-designated pseudo-holidays, March 22 frequently slips our minds. But this year, there’s real reason to think about the future of water. Speaking last Wednesday in Washington and joined by representatives from federal agencies and major American corporations, Secretary […]

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is one of the most interesting and even tragic figures in world politics.Consider his statement made in response to the horrific shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, after its jihadist perpetrator claimed to have been acting in service of the Palestinian cause. Said Fayyad: It is time for […]

We ran three big essays: While you might think that Republicans will be on the forefront of pushing America to re-think its commitment to the outmoded blue model, it may also be Democrats looking for efficient and sustainable means of delivering popular public services that catalyze the change. As the Spanish oil company YPF was unceremoniously relieved […]