“Other countries could blame Russia for their lost decades; Russia, having no one to blame, couldn’t face its history” This piece of rhetorical puffery appeared about two years ago as an explanation for Russia’s alleged “de-democratization”. Not only does it ignore such things as the abortive trial of the CPSU in May 1992 and the Butovo Memorial, but it has a serious blind spot: the former communist countries have not come to terms with the fact that many of their people eagerly participated in the Bolshevik experiment and that they have a share of responsibility in the disaster. Bolshevism was not a purely “Russian” phenomenon.

Mr. Andrei Lugovoi should shrug off his political immunity, get on a plane to London and demand his day in court. He will find the jury of twelve ordinary British citizens in the Old Bailey much more fair and balanced than he possibly believes from his intimate acquaintance of the Russian criminal court system. The trial should be public, without faceless representatives from the British security services giving evidence in camera, and Mr. Lugovoi should be free to air his accusations of Mr. Litvinenko’s machinations with British security services.

It’s not so long ago that we were all talking about high oil prices. Today, across the world, the economic outlook has changed dramatically. In the developed nations, governments have had to take major stakes in the banking system.

The "Kyoto Protocol" seems to have become one of the items in a clutter of news that we all wake up to occasionally. Not many of us are aware of the impact this Protocol offers our lives. But for policy makers and environmentalists it is altogether a different ball game, and rightly so. With the threat of climate change looming large over the planet's future as of May 2008, 182 countries have ratified the Protocol. Of these, 36 industrialized countries including Russia are required to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to about 5% below 1990 levels in the period 2008-2012. These industrialized countries account for roughly half of global greenhouse gas emission. Russia's ratification of the Protocol on November 18, 2004 was a decision keenly watched globally, amidst the USA's tough stance against the Protocol compounded by an impasse on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.

In Europe new challenges are emerging to the European Union over issues such as the accountability of the powerful Commissioners to the public.

The EU is a consortium of 27 independent states based on the European Coal and Steel Community of 1950 and since the 1957 the Treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’. The ‘Maastricht’ Treaty of 1993 established the European Union.

A common definition of globalisation amongst sociologists is ‘all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society’ (Albrow, 1990). This idea of universality and integration, can easily be understood as something positive. But the most common interpretation of globalization is the imposition of Western hegemony, capitalism, and perpetuation of inequality --- a process that seems to stand more for uniformity than for universality, and for oppression than opportunity.