Janet McBride

President Dmitry Medvedev's conference on the modern state and global security this week was an object lesson in efficiency and organisation. Four hours north east of Moscow in the ancient city of Yaroslavl, security was tight but not overbearing, hundreds of Moscow and Saint Petersburg students guided guests to their hotels and waited tables with exquisite fish, caviar, pastries, vegetables and fruit in a marquee beside the conference hall.

Russia was showing the face of a modern state with a global role.

Escaping the speeches for a view of Yaroslavl's medieval Kremlin and onion-domed churches and monasteries, a few of us set off down the road from the conference centre in search of a taxi to drive us into town. The modern conference grounds quickly gave way to small wooden kiosks selling 'products', 'vegetables' - no brand names here.

No taxi either but there was a kiosk selling water melons, run by an Azeri eager to earn some extra cash.

His Lada stank of petrol and exhaust fumes belched inside the car every time it pulled away from every junction. He told us police sometimes stopped him because of his dark colouring - in this part of northern Russia blonde is the order of the day. And he complained that his invalid allowance - he had kidney problems - barely covered the cost of his medicine.

Bumping into the centre of Yaroslavl, the Volga stretched before us, we saw a harbour packed with millionaire's boats. Out of the car and walking through the ancient gates of the Kremlin, we were greeted by an old woman sitting on a wooden chair.

Can the real Russia please step forward?

Back in December, 2007, Sudan's legal system was a focus of international media attention because of a British schoolteacher jailed for insulting Islam by naming the class teddy bear Mohammad. In that instance the teacher, Gillian Gibons, was pardoned and returned to her home in Britain.

Today Sudan's legal systems is making headlines again, this time over charges brought against a woman for wearing trousers. Lubna Hussein, a former journalist and U.N. press officer, faces 40 lashes in a case that has become a test of Sudan's decency laws.

Again the authorities look as if they may be backing down. The case has been adjourned to Sept 7 while the judge checks with the United Nations whether Hussein has immunity.

Indecency cases are not uncommon in Sudan, where there is a large cultural gap between the mostly Muslim and Arab-oriented north and the mainly Christian south.

Hussein has attracted attention by publicizing her case, posing for photos in her loose green trousers and inviting journalists to campaign against dress codes sporadically imposed in the capital.

Her case has attracted widespread support among women's groups in Khartoum. Dozens of supporters - men and women - rallied outside the court where she appeared on Tuesday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he is 'deeply concerned' by the case.

Why is it that Sudan seems sensitive to outside opinion on trousers and last year's teddy bear case, but impervious to international pressure over the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese President Bashir on war crimes charges?

Posted by Gleb Bryanski

Foreign investors who filed into a Moscow hotel on Wednesday anxious to hear what Russia's anti-crisis tsar First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov had to say about the future of the market were disappointed to find he had not shown up.

They had many questions: the stock market is down around 70 percent since May peak, gold and forex reserves are have fallen below $500 billion for the first time in eight months as Russia props up the rouble and the economic outlook is uncertain.

Investors were left to listen to economists from UBS, whose conferences in better times used to attract the cream of Russia's business and political elite. Other official speakers later took the floor.

"I am not going to answer your questions for now because there are journalists in the hall and I will have to give you very stupid answers," said Stanislav Voskresensky, a 32-year-old deputy economy minister who is tipped as a rising star.

"Let's talk more informally in the bar this evening, I will be able to give you more honest answers," he added, before being ushered out of the hall by UBS-hired security guards, with reporters kept at a safe distance.

Russian officials, armed with the third largest forex reserves in the world, are trying to project an image of self-confidence. They are blaming the crisis on the United States.

They need to calm nerves among foreign investors in particular because much of the money that had been fleeing the Russian market and causing dramatic stock market loss is foreign-owned.

But ordinary Russians, who have been dumping roubles, and Western portfolio managers are not entirely convinced.

"The question everybody has is where is the bottom? I am sick of putting money in and watching it disappear. There is no liquidity, no-one is buying, it is like a nightmare," said John Connor, portfolio manager at U.S. fund Third Millennium Russia. "It is like going to Las Vegas and watching the money fall through the floor. I am not into gambling with my investors' money."

Aivaras Abromavicius, from Sweden's East Capital, asked Kremlin's economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich what the government is planning to do about some majority owners pulling out of share buyouts despite complaints from minority shareholders.

Dvorkovich said the matter should be taken to court and the government did not plan to interfere in court decisions. Abromavicius said he was happy Dvorkovich was at least aware of the problem.

He added that Western funds were worried about arbitrary trade stoppages in the Russian bourses, which hindered fund redemptions, and were in his view a sign that the Russian market was still far from being civilised.

The government has unveiled a package of over $200 billion to keep the economy going and some investors, who also work in other ex-Soviet countries, have praised Moscow's response.

"Unlike many other states, Russia makes decisions, takes measures, works out strategy. They have the money and the political will," Abromavicius said. "What you need the least is officials sowing panic."

Russian officials have become harder to reach with secretaries saying they are out in meetings all day. Shuvalov spent all morning on Tuesday in closed-door talks with a group of UK businessmen led by business minister Peter Mandelson.

Shuvalov's office told Reuters the official had to prepare for the afternoon government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and had to cancel his speaking arrangement at the
UBS conference.

The economic crisis has also forced Russia to finally launch its own "Invest in Russia" Website, available at www.investinrussia.info, in a sign that the country may warm up to foreign investors.

"We hope this will somehow help us," Voskresensky said.

There are moments when tectonic plates shift and history changes course.

Sometimes those shifts are barely perceptible -- the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One but also bred German resentment and the rise of Nazism; the Yalta conference that helped create the United Nations as a guardian of peace but also led to the Iron Curtain that divided Europe for nearly half a century; and the Great Depression (arguably the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, says Martin Wolf).

It is only when we look back we see the world has changed.

Are we at such a point now? 

John Gray in The Observer speaks of a shattering moment in America's fall from power. Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck has said the United States has lost its financial superpower status. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said we need to rebuild the whole financial system from scratch, as they did at Bretton Woods. The Telegraph called for a 'better capitalism'.

What of its status in other areas, of diplomacy, defence and its lead role in NATO? Can an inward looking United States commit to billions of dollars to rescue its financial system and at the same time commit ever more money to military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere?

There is a widely held view that September, 11, 2001 changed the world. Will the effects of 2008's financial crisis prove even more profound?

Today's European edition of the International Herald Tribune is fronted by a photo montage of the presidents of Senegal, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Argentina, France and Brazil.

They have two things in common - all are attending this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York and all see a global threat from the financial crisis that began on Wall Street and, in the words of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, has moved "like a terrible tsunami around the globe".

Some of the strongest words were directed at Washington lawmakers, Wall Street speculators and market regulators.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for those responsible for the crisis to be punished. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has said to the United States and Britain: "I told you so".

Her finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, believes the United States has lost its financial superpower status.

Bolivia's President Evo Morales has been quoted as saying: "There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity."

How does this fit with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assurance that the world still has confidence in the United States?

Who needs to adjust their lenses?

Depending on where you stand, the financial crisis has been catastrophic or brought a much needed shake out in the financial sector; it has been disastrous for home owners or proved the folly of lending to people with poor credit histories; it has rightly rolled back the clock on naked capitalism or undermined a system that, in essence, functions perfectly well; it has punished bankers' hubris or thrown many talented individuals out of work.

What you see depends on where you stand.

According to Italy's economy minister,  Giulio Tremonti, the current economic crisis was the inevitable consequence of policies championed by former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan.

"The mastery turned out to be madness. Alan Greenspan was considered a master. Now it should be asked whether, after Bin Laden, is it not he who has done the most harm to America?", Tremonti was quoted as saying in an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper this week.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in April, Greenspan hit back at his detractors. "I was praised for things I didn't do," he said. "I am now being blamed for things that I didn't do."

The debate over what happened and why, who is to blame and where we go from here has sent bloggers and columnists into overdrive. Here are links to some on the UK economy, the Paulson doctrine and AIG and Lehman. There is an argument that the United States' response to the crisis is evidence of its waning financial power.

Who has got it right?
 

International prosecutors' pursuit of Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for alleged genocide has not curtailed his travel schedule. He is in Turkey this week, defiant and saying the move by the International Criminal Court has backfired -- his hold on power is stronger than ever.

Bashir gave an exclusive interview to Reuters, his first since ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was seeking a warrant for his arrest.

Here are excerpts from the conversation with Reuters:

"The decision of the ICC prosecutor is already soldifying our internal front, the internal front of our Sudanese people, and that is the source of our power and we will fight their
actions."

"...we don't give a damn about the precedents set by those going to court."

"We are not concerned about travelling, ourselves, we have good relations with a number of countries that do not have relations with the ICC."

Does Bashir's trip to Turkey (which isn't a signatory to the ICC) show him to be above the law? How can the ICC respond, with no police force of its own to enforce its rulings even if it does issue a warrant for Bashir's arrest?

African and Arab states want the court moves put on hold, fearing they would only make it harder to bring peace to Darfur. Oil producing Sudan's close ally China has also voiced concern at the attempt to put Bashir on trial.

Can the ICC prosecutor prevail?

A poster at the entrance to the World War One exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum depicts the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, minutes before they were shot dead as they toured the streets of Sarajevo in an open topped car. The two bullets triggered World War One. Alliances quickly came into play and an argument between Austria and Serbia drew in Russia, Germany, France, Belgium and Britain.

Europe was at war.

On August 8 this year Russia sent its forces into Georgia to repel Tbilisi's attempt to wrest control of the pro-Russian, breakaway region South Ossetia. Georgia, like Ukraine, has been pressing to join NATO but has only been promised membership of the alliance at an unspecified future date. What would have happened if Georgia had already secured NATO membership, as it wished, at the alliance's meeting in Bucharest back in April?

Would the conflict have dragged in fellow NATO members including the United States, Britain and Germany? By invoking NATO's Article V mutual defence clause, the Georgians could have required other nations to come to their assistance.

Could this have led to another European war at a time when the West's guard was down and the Cold War years seemed consigned to history?

In the days after the conflict began, a senior envoy from a European state opposed to Georgian NATO entry told Reuters: "Thank heavens we didn't take them in... No one in NATO wants to be dragged into a war in the Caucasus because of (President Mikheil) Saakashvili's miscalculations."

What do you think? 

Ever since Russia launched a massive counter-offensive in response to Georgia's attempt to retake the pro-Russian, breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been omnipresent in Western media. He has appeared on CBS, CNN, BBC and pretty much every other English-language TV channel to accuse Russia of penetrating Georgia far beyond Ossetia, planning an assault on the capital and plotting his overthrow. 

On Aug 11 he wrote an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal warning Georgia's fall would mean the fall of the West.

At the start of the conflict the verdict was unequivocal. Saakashvili was winning the media war hands down. While the Kremlin's press operation was largely silent, Saakashvili, an urbane, U.S.-educated lawyer, was assured in putting Georgia's case. The world's media and many political leaders swung behind him (in words if not deeds).

But is the tide turning? Saakashvili's wall-to-wall media coverage may be starting to work against him and the Russians have become more nimble in dealing with the media and countering Saakashvili's accusations.

Even close ally the United States has reined him in, knocking down his assertion that U.S. forces would take control of Georgia's airports and ports.
Is Saakashvili's well-oiled public relations machine starting to work against him? Is he losing sympathy internationally?

The Caucasus tinderbox is alight again. How far will the flames spread this time and what can the outside world - the United States, the European Union, NATO - do to extinguish them?

The strategic significance of this mountainous region stretches back through history.

To the west lies the Black Sea, to the east the Caspian, to the south the Mediterranean, Iran and Turkey.

In the past Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and the Russian tsars struggled to control its trade routes. Today Russia and the West are competing for influence over its energy pipelines carrying Caspian oil to world markets.

The Caucasus' blue mountains and fiercely independent people have caught the imagination of Russian writers, Lermontov and Tolstoy. It has created only headaches for political leaders.

Georgia's pro-Russian breakaway region South Ossetia is the latest battle ground in a long-running conflict.

Will the fighting, involving Russian and Georgian troops end there, or will another of Georgia's breakaway regions Abkhazia seize the opportunity to press its claim for autonomy?

And what of Chechnya, a thorn in Russia's side for nearly two centuries. Moscow sent in the troops to bring Chechnya to heel in 1994 and again in 1999. Will it try again to free itself of Moscow's influence?

And what can the international community do to end the fighting. Dependent on Russian oil and gas, Europe has little or no room for manouevre. The United States has provided vocal backing of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, but he would be misguided to expect more. So who can put out the flames?