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Much is happening today in Georgia and other states formerly under the thumb of Russia. President Saakashvili has signed a cease-fire agreement; Russian troops have nevertheless advanced within 35 miles of Tbilisi; President Bush denounced Russia for "bullying and intimidation" and said that "Moscow must honor its commitment to withdraw its invading forces from all Georgian territory," something Russia plainly has no intention of doing. Yesterday, in what may or may not have been a coincidence of timing, the U.S and Poland announced that after 18 months of negotiations, they have reached on an agreement whereby the U.S. will furnish...

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a US missile defense battery exposes the country to attack, pointing out that Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons in such a situation, the Interfax news agency reported. *** Interfax said he added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn said that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, according to Interfax.

WARSAW (AFP) - Warsaw and Washington have reached a preliminary deal on basing a controversial US missile shield in Poland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced Thursday.

Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch -- all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing. "Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism. But was that ever quite true? In reality, to...

TBILISI, Georgia -- Russia's invasion of Georgia strikes at the heart of Western values and our 21st-century system of security. If the international community allows Russia to crush our democratic, independent state, it will be giving carte blanche to authoritarian governments everywhere. Russia intends to destroy not just a country but an idea. For too long, we all underestimated the ruthlessness of the regime in Moscow. Yesterday brought further evidence of its duplicity: Within 24 hours of agreeing to a cease-fire, Russian forces were rampaging through Gori; blocking the port of Poti; sinking Georgian vessels; and -- worst of all...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary August 13, 2008 Setting the Record Straight: President Bush Has Taken Action to Ensure Peace, Security and Humanitarian Aid in Georgia The Wall Street Journal Inaccurately Claims The Administration Was Slow To Respond To The Conflict Between Georgia And Russia The Wall Street Journal asserts that "U.S. credibility is … on the line as the Bush Administration stumbles to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia. So far the Administration has been missing in action." (Editorial, "Bush And Georgia," The Wall Street Journal, 8/13/08) President Bush and his Administration have taken aggressive...

TBILISI, Georgia (CNN) -- The leaders of a former Eastern Bloc nation and four former Soviet republics showed support for Georgia in its conflict with Russia at a massive rally in Georgia's capital Tuesday night. The presidents' appearances came shortly before France's leader announced that Georgia had accepted a Russian-French plan to end the conflict. Thousands cheered as the presidents of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia stood with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, late Tuesday.

With its invasion of Georgia, Russia has announced to the world that its superpower status is back. The Kremlin is once more flexing its military muscles -- the same way it did between 1945 and 1991, and the results are turning out to be just as bloody. There are already hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded and refugees. The tiny region of South Ossetia, located in the Caucuses mountains of southern Russia, is at the center of these tensions. It is a complicated conflict within conflicts. Georgia, which broke away from the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991,...

Russia's neighbours put on edge by war threat (AFP) 10 August 2008 WARSAW - The conflict between Georgia and Russia has stunned eastern European nations who can still feel the scars of their domination by the former Soviet Union. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland called on the European Union and NATO to oppose Russia's "imperialist" policy towards Georgia. And even countries such as Sweden, which was not part of the Soviet bloc, expressed extreme concern at the conflict, making comparisons to Adolf Hitler's tactics as leader of Nazi Germany. Russia has in turn been vocal in criticising neighbours such as...

Georgian Pres. Saakashvili on BBC (video) Excerpts- "this is about Russian annihilation of democracy in Georgia" "In 1921 Russia came and occupied this country... under pretexed of protecting minorities and then we were under communism for next 70 years" "We don't want to go back under Russian rule no matter what" "We'll fight for our independence" "We will never give up our freedom"

British Nazi-Al Qaeda Links? They are unmistakable and definite The Independent reported on July 10, 2005 that Al Qaeda may have hired a gang of “white mercenary terrorists” to carry out the London bombings.The Daily Mirror reported on July 16, 2005 that the four bombers may have been “duped” into carrying their bomb-laden backpacks on to the Underground and a bus. There is also intelligence that points to Italian neo-fascist, Pentagon Task Force 121, and Balkan Islamic fundamentalist links to the London bombers. French counter-terrorism official have reported that Balkans or Eastern European-origin military grade explosives were used in the...

The Hill of Crosses, hundreds of thousands of them, tightly packed and dating from about the 14th century, stands in the city of Siauliai, Lithuania, as a symbol of opposition to foreign occupation and persecution in the small Eastern European country. During the Soviet era, the communists tried to bulldoze and flood the sacred national site.  In Paterson, a framed photograph of the hill hangs in the basement of St. Casimir's Parish, a testament to the enduring national pride of the Lithuanian Catholic church, one of the city's last churches catering to the ethnic group for which it was...

Europeans starting to focus on the post-primary debate in America — and on what an Obama administration might mean — will want to pay particular attention to the op-ed dispatch in the Wall Street Journal yesterday from Senator Schumer. The Democrat of New York proposes that America deal with the Iranian nuclear crisis by turning Eastern Europe back over to Russia. If that sounds like an exaggeration, we commend a reading of the article in full at WSJ.com. Sure enough, the senator claims that Prime Minister Putin "is an old-fashioned nationalist who seeks to regain the power and greatness Russia...

In tribute to Polish air force officers. A memorial in tribute to 20 Polish air force officers who died in the crash of the Casa transport plane two months has been unveiled in the Mirosławiec air base in north-western Poland. It consists of a stone plaque with the names of all the victims of the disaster, a wooden cross and the stabilizer recovered from the plane’s wreckage. The ceremony was attended by members of the officers’ families and by high-ranking military officials including the Chief of the General Staff.

PRAGUE (Thomson Financial) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev attacked US plans to site an anti-missile system in central and eastern Europe, saying that it was aimed at Russia and China and not Iran. 'You believe that (the system) will be used against Iran? No, the whole system is aimed against Russia and China,' Gorbachev said in an interview broadcast by Czech public television today. He dismissed sustained US statements that the anti-missile system is aimed exclusively at countering the threat from 'rogue states' such as Iran. 'The US radar is a serious question and the Czech government has been...

(VILNIUS) - European Union newcomer Lithuania on Saturday celebrated the 90th anniversary of The Act of Independence, that re-established Lithuanian state after more than a century of Russian occupation. "Today is a special day, we look at it with pride, it inspires us with fortitude," Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus said at a special ceremony in parliament in the capital Vilnius. "It was exactly 90 years ago, when the Lithuanian nation achived the right to freely create its future and to build its own state" Adamkus added. Lithuania, which emerged as a state in the 13th century, was the largest country...

As Slovenia prepares to take on the presidency of the European Union growing numbers of Slovenes are yearning for the old Yugoslavia. The phenomenon of Jugonostalgija has come to Slovenia despite the country's successful entry to the euro, the first of the new EU countries to join, and after 17 years of independence. Slovenia is hailed as a great Balkan success story and a glowing EU example for the other countries of the former Communist Yugoslavia that collapsed amid civil war in the 1990s. But many Slovenes look back longingly with "Yugo-nostalgia" to the days before EU membership. Marco Sporar,...

September 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The Economic Freedom Network, a global association of research and educational institutes, has just issued its annual report, which rates only one former communist country among the world's top nations with policies that support economic freedom. That country is Estonia. The report has high praise for Estonia, whose economy grew by over 11 percent in 2006. It notes that Estonia performed better not only in comparison with its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, but also placed ahead of countries like France and Germany -- not to mention Belgium, Ukraine, or Russia, which are near the...

Prague (dpa) - Daniel Novy, a spokesman for the Czech embassy in Washington, did not celebrate when US President George W Bush signed into law a bill that introduces new rules for visa-free travel to the United States. "It is the way it is," Novy tells Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa matter-of-factly. "It is neither a complete victory nor a complete defeat." That is the gist of what the Czech Republic and five other former communist nations - Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia - said in a recent statement. They billed the new US visa rules a step in the right...

Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation.