Russia's election officials have barred former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov from running as an opposition candidate in the March presidential election.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) said there were many invalid signatures in Mr Kasyanov's list of supporters.
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"This means the elections will be a farce," Mr Kasyanov's spokeswoman, Yelena Dikun, told Reuters news agency.

"It shows the authorities are afraid of any competition, it means the authorities fear any alternative points of view," she said.

"They are afraid, just so afraid."

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Kasyanov barred from Russian poll

During the year I commanded a combat battalion in West Baghdad in 2006, some of the soldiers in our outfit were wounded and some were killed, but we did not fail. In my opinion we succeeded.

a (angry) voice in the wilderness challenging the new orthodoxy

it may be too personal for the writer to allow him to see the wider picture but remains an important perspective accurate or not

Our troops did not fail in 2006 - International Herald Tribune

American-backed Sunni militias who have fought Sunni extremists to a standstill in some of Iraq's bloodiest battlegrounds are being hit with a wave of assassinations and bomb attacks, threatening a fragile linchpin of the military's strategy to pacify the nation.

At least 100 predominantly Sunni militiamen, known as Awakening Council members or Concerned Local Citizens, have been killed in the past month, mostly around Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, urban areas with mixed Sunni and Shiite populations, according to Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani. At least six of the victims were senior Awakening leaders, Iraqi officials said.

Attacks imperil U.S.-backed militias in Iraq - International Herald Tribune

It’s not often that I find myself recommending a French state-owned industry as the answer to major U.S. problems, but I guess there’s an exception to every rule.

In this case the exception is the French nuclear energy company Areva, which provides about 80 percent of the country’s electricity from 58 nuclear power plants, is building a new generation of reactor that will come on line at Flamanville in 2012, and is exporting its expertise to countries from China to the United Arab Emirates.

America Needs France’s Atomic Anne - New York Times

When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.

Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?
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It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq.
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it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!

i hate to say I agree however the hypocrisy here is that the writer doesn't also point out that likewise there is a complete refusal by Republicans to acknowledge that the whole fiasco could have been avoided in the first place and that the invasion should never have happened in the first place. And was fundamentally immoral and that the US and co launched a war of aggression. A crime for which individuals were prosecuted at Nuremburg. A plague on both your houses.

PS Is George W Bush really to be commended for successfully scrabbling himself out of the mess he created. After costing the lives of several thousand American lives, several tens of thousand Iraqi lives, and upteen billion dollars.

I admit to being wrong about the surge and I want George and all those with blood on their hands to admit they were wrong for starting the war in the first place.

The Democrats’ Fairy Tale - New York Times

While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.

But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers much lower wages.

For the world economy as a whole — and especially for poorer nations — growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good thing. Above all, it offers backward economies their best hope of moving up the income ladder.

But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult.

Trouble With Trade - New York Times

Belgium’s favorite Surrealist son, René Magritte, is famous for his painting of an apple on which he wrote: “This is not an apple.” He did the same for a pipe. Today he might aptly produce a rendering of his native land and inscribe on it: “This is not a country.”

It looks like a prosperous one, with its lace and chocolate stores, and beautiful Bruges, and its glassy sprawl of European Union institutions, and its very own tennis champion, Justine Henin. But for more than a half-year Belgium has been unable to form a government because its 10.4 million citizens can’t decide what the state is for.

A Surreal State - New York Times

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has narrowly lost a referendum on controversial constitutional changes.

Voters rejected the raft of reforms by a margin of 51% to 49%, the chief of the National Electoral Council said.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Chavez defeated over reform vote

Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police force. Families build houses illegally on government land, car washes steal water from public pipes and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now be found on the black market.

Painkillers for cancer (from the Health Ministry) cost $80 for a few capsules; electricity meters (from the Electricity Ministry) go for $200 each and even third-grade textbooks (stolen from the Education Ministry) must be bought at bookstores for three times what schools once charged.

"Everyone is stealing from the state," said Adel al-Subihawi, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in disgust. "It's a very large meal and everyone wants to eat."

Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and U.S. officials assess the effects of this year's U.S. troop increase, there is a growing sense that, even as security has improved, Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness.

One recent independent analysis ranked Iraq the third most corrupt country in the world. Out of 163 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a group based in Berlin that publishes the index annually.

Corruption and theft soar in Iraq - International Herald Tribune

The case of a 20-year-old woman who was sentenced to be lashed after pressing charges against seven men who raped her and a male companion has provoked a rare and angry public debate in Saudi Arabia, leading to renewed calls for reform of the Saudi judicial system.

this is how i would define obsenity

In Saudi Arabia, a rape victim's sentence spurs calls for reform - International Herald Tribune