What did we expect?

IHT - If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush [...]

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Poland Risks Serious Confrontation with Russia

Spiegel - The Cold War is returning to Poland. Warsaw wants to further tighten ties with Washington and it has used the US missile defense system to do so — against massive opposition from Moscow. In return, the Poles will now be given Patriot missiles to protect themselves.

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After Musharraf

Nation - Barely twenty-four hours after President Pervez Musharraf exited the Pakistani scene, politically speaking, his opponents seem unable to agree on what to do next. It is not certain what General Musharraf will do now, part from undertaking a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. He was reported to be building a retirement [...]

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How a comedian became the most influential voice in American politics

Independent - When Jon Stewart inaugurated his fake news anchor on The Daily Show eight years ago, his goal was to send up the hyperbolic and manufactured controversy of US Cable News and, if possible, be even more outrageous. Now, in a wonderful through-the-looking-glass moment, he has supplanted the subjects of his mockery [...]

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Boundary Issues - What Putin is doing in Georgia

New Yorker - The record is long: after the Ottoman decline came the slaughter of Armenians and the drawing of senseless boundaries in the Middle East; imperial Britain left in its wake the wars in Ireland, Palestine, Nigeria, and the Indian subcontinent; the French provided a legacy of imminent violence from Algeria [...]

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Cameron and McCain are best suited to defy Russian aggression

Telegraph - Suddenly we have a very different picture of the sort of political leader that we need. The world is not the same place that it was when the four main players on the Anglo-American political scene came on to the field.

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Population paradox: Europe’s time bomb

Independent - A leading medical journal recently called for British couples to stop having so many children to ‘reduce global warming’. But much of the rest of Europe has a different problem: declining birthrates and ageing populations. And trends across the traditionally more fertile developing world are just as uneven. Paul Vallely investigates [...]

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