Could that rosy fingered light on the summits of the Hindu Kush actually be dawn?Al Qaeda is dying. So say senior officials in the Obama administration, echoing new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent declaration in Afghanistan: “We’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda”.Let’s hope they are right. With Osama bin Laden dead and drone strikes […]

The Blue State welfare system is cracking up, economic growth is shaky, old institutions and beliefs no longer fit reality, and professional bureaucrats and intellectuals are at a loss about what to do about it; these are important themes that we have been exploring here at Via Meadia.Robert Samuelson has a smart op-ed in the […]

It’s been a rough summer on the animal front.  A shark attack on the Outer Banks, grizzly maulings in Alaska and Yellowstone, and a series of elephant rampages in Nepal.  Closer to glamorous Queens, a mountain lion trekked from South Dakota to Greenwich, Connecticut before being struck by a car and killed on the Wilbur […]

One year after intense flooding devastated much of Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of families are still at risk of more floods, while thousands of others remain in refugee camps and river embankments remain un-repaired. Corruption, predictably, has hampered the distribution of aid destined for construction, repair and protection from further flooding. Vast areas of the fertile […]

Despite all the turbulence and chaos in the world, every now and then some signs emerge that America’s grand strategy is actually working.  In particular, what I’ve called “sticky power,” the fatal attraction the global economy exerts on rising powers that tends to lock them into long term collaboration with America’s big plans for the […]

Reading the news these days is like playing catch with an over-eager retriever.  Every morning the media drops a spit soaked tennis ball of soggy ‘news’ about the debt ceiling fight in your lap.Bad dog!  Speculation about whether Boehner or Obama will “win” the debt debate is not news!The main reason this is dragging on: […]

On July 1, 2011, thirteen US senators opposed to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) participated in a video that is meant to encourage gays and lesbians to persevere and to be optimistic about the future. One of the thirteen, Senator Robert Wyden (Democrat from Oregon), said: “DOMA, folks, is on the wrong side of […]

The Greens aren’t the only ones who can’t get their treaties in shape; the World Trade Organization also illustrates the crisis of globalism in the twenty-teens.The news from the WTO is bad and getting worse.  The great and the good wring their hands as momentum continues to leak from the round. and there’s a significant chance […]

India is the most important county most westerners know the least about — a reflection in part on the Eurocentrism of establishment media which follows every twist and turn of European politics but only looks at India when something blows up.From the Indian Express comes a list of the ten most powerful people in India […]

Today we celebrate one of the great blogging wins of all time: 223 years ago the great state of New York became the eleventh state to ratify the Constitution.Almost 200 years before Al Gore invented the internet, the bloggers of those days were forced to use primitive materials; a chemical staining solution was smeared over […]