Mr Howard said there would only be enough water in the huge Murray-Darling river system for drinking purposes. He acknowledged that this would have a "potentially devastating" impact on many horticultural, crop and dairy industries around the river basin. But he said there was no choice, and he described the situation as "grim".

Irrigators are already warning that if they cannot water their land, there will be huge crop losses and Australian consumers will face large price rises. Australia is suffering from its worst drought on record, and the lack of rainfall has already severely reduced the production of major irrigated crops in the Murray-Darling river basin.

The basin, which covers an area the size of France and Spain combined, accounts for 41% of Australian agriculture and usually provides about 85% of the nation's irrigation supply. "If it doesn't rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the basin" until May 2008, Mr Howard told reporters in Canberra.

There would be water only for "critical urban supplies" and farmers' own domestic use, he said. "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise," he said. "We must all hope and pray there is rain." Mr Howard acknowledged that banning irrigation for crops and livestock in the Murray-Darling basin would have a "critical" impact on many industries in the area.

Farmers are warning that Australians could face major food price rises if no water is allocated to irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin. National Farmers' Federation head Ben Fargher said that thousands of farmers could lose their citrus, almond and olives trees if they cannot be watered this year. "If those ... trees do die, then it takes a number of years to recover - maybe five to six years of lost production," he told ABC radio.

Australia may not have a rice crop at all this season if it gets no irrigation allocations, Laurie Arthur, president of the Ricegrowers Association, told Reuters news agency. "If it stays dry there will potentially be catastrophic losses," he said.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority. It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how not whether to perform an abortion.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions. More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics.

Monday's departure of six government cabinet ministers from the Iraqi government will indeed erode support for American-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The ministers represented radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, on whom Mr. Maliki relied to take the top government post in Iraq.

But the withdrawal of the Sadrists who left in protest over the prime minister's refusal to set a date for the departure of US troops highlights more troubling developments: widening fissures within the country's ruling coalition and a brewing Shiite fight for supremacy that threatens to unravel the leading political coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).

"The fragmentation of the Shiites, and the fights that are taking place, are much more serious than what gets talked about publicly," says Hosham Dawod, a Paris-based Iraqi academic and author.
To win these fights that have on occasion taken the form of armed confrontation and threaten to do so again leading Shiite political figures are rallying popular support by clutching on big emotional causes.
In the case of Mr. Sadr, it's taking on the US military presence.

For the rival Fadhila Islamic party, it's confronting Iranian influence and meddling. And for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by the influential Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, it's purging all remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime.

Adding further complications is Iran's suspected support for both politics and violence, the role of the powerful tribes in this struggle especially in the south, and the emergence of well-armed Shiite splinter groups, some of which thrive on extortion and protection money.

The stakes are immense. The political battle is about control. Each Shiite party wants power in Baghdad, the so-called mid-Euphrates provinces, Najaf and Karbala, which are home to Shiite Islam's holiest sites, and the southern province Basra with its vital oil resources and maritime facilities. "The only thing that [the parties] agree on is remaining in power and confronting one another. There is a negative meeting point, and that's not enough to build a government," says Mr. Dawod.

President Bush did offer a biblical message of hope, when he suggested the school community that lost 32 members to the shootings by an out-of-control resident alien student find "comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God." But even he didn't bring Jesus, the only hope of comfort and future life for Christians, into the memorials.

"I'm sitting here watching the convocation service at VT," wrote a WND reader who was given anonymity. "Five minutes ago they had four representatives from the local 'religious community.' The Muslim specifically invoked Allah's blessings and he didn't shy away from saying the name of Allah. The Jewish rep asked for God's blessings. Buddha was represented. The only name that [was] omitted, of course, Jesus Christ."

"At the moment, I have decided that the European Union should be an observer of the case rather than a party to it," Mandelson said at a luncheon party hosted by Guan Chengyuan, Chinese ambassador to the EU.

The US government announced its decision last week to file two cases with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against China over the issues concerning intellectual property rights (IPR) and accession to China's publication market, a move criticized by China as contrary to the mutual understanding about properly solving trade disputes. "I, as you know, favor dialogue over WTO cases. Dialogue is my preference," Mandelson told Xinhua.

The EU trade chief cited the negotiated solution to the Sino-EU trade row over textiles in 2005 as a success model. Mandelson himself led the talks with China, which helped to avert a looming trade war between the two trading partners with a mutually beneficial compromise.

While acknowledging that the Chinese government has made efforts to better protect IPR and combat piracy, Mandelson urged China to do more in law enforcement and implementation of bilateral agreements in order to relieve the concern of EU investors.

Chinese ambassador Guan Chengyuan agreed with Mandelson that dialogue, instead of legal complaints, is the best solution to trade disputes, pointing out that China's efforts should be recognized. "It is our consistent approach to solve problems through dialogue and consultation, which is beneficial to the promotion of bilateral economic and trade relations," Guan said.

The proposal, on its face, purports to create bans on "hate crimes," but Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition said it more accurately is "an attempt by the ultra liberals and the homosexuals to force Americans to accept homosexuality and gender disturbance as equal to God's Created Order of heterosexuality."

He said states already have the resources to deal with crimes of bodily harm or assault, and the plan is simply not needed. Worse yet, he said, it creates a crime of "thought."
"The 'Hate Crimes' bill is better named 'Hate Grandma' or "hate Free Speech' bill as it poses a serious threat to the freedom of speech for every American," Folger said. "We must stop it before they send your grandma, your pastor, or you to jail for sharing your faith or speaking the truth about an agenda that seeks to silence us."

The television ad campaign by Faith2Action will feature Philadelphia grandmothers who already were thrown in jail in Pennsylvania under that state's "hate crimes" law and faced the possibility of 47 years in jail for testifying in public about their Christian faith.

Michael Marcavage, director of Repent America joined Pike in expressing alarm over the plan. Marcavage told WND that plan would invert American justice, and instead of requiring evidence it would leave it to someone who claims to be offended to determine whether a "crime" has been committed.

"Truth is not allowed as evidence in hate crimes trials. A homosexual can claim emotional damage from hearing Scripture that describes his lifestyle as an abomination. He can press charges against the pastor or broadcaster who merely reads the Bible in public. The 'hater' can be fined thousands of dollars and even imprisoned!" Marcavage said.

As WND has reported, such laws already have been used around the world, where in Canada pastors are fearful of reading biblical injunctions against homosexuality, and in Australia where two pastors were convicted of "vilifying" Islam.

Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth, noted that in Canada and France both, legislators have been fined for publicly criticizing homosexuality. Three years ago, a Swedish hate crimes law was used to put Pastor Ake Green, who preached that homosexuality is a sin, in jail for a month.

"And recently, a British couple told how they were denied the chance to adopt because it was determined that their Christian faith might 'prejudice' them against a homosexual child put in their care," LaBarbera added.
Already in the United States, Catholic Charities of Boston halted all adoption operations in the state after being told under Massachusetts' pro-'gay' nondiscrimination law, only agencies that placed children in homosexual-led households would get licensed by the state.

CFLs are all the rage. They are the spirally shaped, long-lasting bulbs everyone is being urged, cajoled and guilt-tripped into purchasing to replace Thomas Edison's incandescents, which are being compared to suburban utility vehicles for their impracticality and energy inefficiency.

However, there is no problem disposing of incandescents when their life is over. You can throw them in the trash can and they won't hurt the garbage collector. They won't leech deadly compounds into the air or water. They won't kill people working in the landfills.

The same cannot be said about the mercury-containing CFLs. They bear disposal warnings on the packaging. But with limited recycling prospects and the problems experienced by Brandy Bridges sure to be repeated millions of times, some think government, the green community and industry are putting the cart before the horse marketing the new technology so ferociously.And while the Consumers Council of Canada advises not to purchase any package of CFL bulbs that contains no instructions, the entire country is on a timetable to eliminate entirely the only alternative the incandescent bulb.

In fact, practically the whole world fearing global warming is getting ready to ban the incandescent light bulb. It started in Cuba, moved to Venezuela, then Australia, Canada and the European Union. Now individual states in the U.S., including California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Rhode Island, are all in the process of legislating an end to Edison's greatest invention. Even local towns and cities are getting into the act.

The rap against the incandescent is that it uses more energy to produce light. Advocates of CFLs say they save money and energy by producing more light over more time for less money and less energy. They prefer to minimize concerns about cleanup and disposal, usually saying more needs to be done in the area of recycling. But recycling experts say the solutions are at least five years away. Meanwhile, millions of consumers and green activists are being persuaded to make the switch.

Some experts predict the next generation of lighting, though, is LED lights. They are made from semiconductor materials that emit light when an electrical current flows through them. When this form of light takes over, all bulbs will be obsolete. Your wall tiles can light up. Curtains and drapes can light up. Even your dining room table could be made to light up at exactly the level you want. That's what is ahead in the next decade, according to some in the industry.

Here's a hint: As "Deep Throat" famously told Washington Post "Watergate" reporter Bob Woodward, "Follow the money."

Whistleblower shows how all the main players from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming. Indeed, just three weeks after the U.N. ratcheted up international fears over global warming, a panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries has now reported to the U.N. that the only thing that can stop catastrophic climate change is a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions.

That's right. Global problems, real or conjured up, require global governmental solutions. As Whistleblower explains, environmentalism is nothing less than the global elitists' replacement ideology for communism/socialism. With communism largely discredited today after all, 100-150 million people died at the hands of communist "visionaries" during the last century elitists who desire to rule other people's lives have gravitated to an even more powerful ideology. More powerful because it seems to trump all other considerations, as it claims the very survival of life on earth is dependent on implementing its agenda.

Thus, while scientists and climatologists who dare to question the rigid orthodoxy of man-made catastrophic global warming are openly ridiculed and threatened with decertification, the movement for global governance, complete with global taxation, is moving into the fast lane.

"Global warming will be one of the most powerfully coercive weapons in the globalists' arsenal for the foreseeable future," said David Kupelian, WND managing editor and author of "The Marketing of Evil." "It's important that everyone understands the game being played. This issue of Whistleblower provides a powerful antidote to all the hysteria namely, common sense and truth."

Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.

Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared in recent years, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors that are feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.
Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success.

The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.

Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. In a case that galvanized the public's and government's attention, shoddy infant formula with little or no nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.

China's Health Ministry reported almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005, with spoiled food accounting for the largest number, followed by poisonous plants or animals and use of agricultural chemicals.

With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections, in some fish.

One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings which make regulation difficult, experts said.

Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Michael P. Farris, cofounder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, says his concern is not just for Germany, where the government is being especially intolerant, but other democracies too. "Germany is the only Western democracy taking this incredibly hard-line approach, but there are growing clouds on a number of national horizons," Farris told WND in an interview after his recent travels to review the status of homeschooling.

"Most homeschoolers have concluded when the family courts begin to get involved, their only realistic opportunity is to seek asylum in another country," Farris said. "You don't expect to apply for political asylum from a Western democracy but that's what's happening and with greater frequency."

"One of the people we met with said as it pertains to the family, parents and the policy of the government towards children generally, it wasn't so much that the [Berlin] wall came down after the fall of communism, but that the wall moved to the left," he said. "The East German government's philosophy seems to be the style adopted by today's German government as it approaches children."

He said even the United Nations, a regular advocate for governmental intervention and influence over most matters, has concluded Germany is stepping over the line because it forbids parents from having significant control over their children's education. The internationally recognized laws acknowledging parental authority in the education of children were adopted, after all, in response to earlier education standards enforced in Germany.

The issue of German parents and their decision-making authority for their children's education was covered in this once-enforced statement: "And this [government] will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing." Adolf Hitler issued the dictate when his government, in one of its first actions when he came to power, took control of all educational institutions and issues.

"The philosophy that the government knows best how to raise children is really becoming a worldwide phenomenon," Farris said. "I think Germany represents the edge of the night that's coming." Farris said the German government has reason to object to "parallel societies" but not from Christian homeschoolers.

He said the largely Muslim Turkish population in Germany numbers in the millions, and members have not assimilated. "What we were told was in many German cities the de facto legal authority is (Muslim religious) sharia law, not German law, and that 'parallel society' is what German officials should worry about," he said.

Farris suggested that a solution, if one is to be found, would be political. "I hope the political leaders of Germany will show some oversight to what their bureaucracy is doing, and recognize they can adopt some reasonable standards for homeschooling, instead of these draconian over-reactions."

For the United States, Farris has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of parents to educate their children at home.

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast. CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK." The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks. German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines. Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause. Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

Coming as it does just before the India-US-Japan trilateral exercise off Yokosuka near Tokyo Bay on April 17, the move is likely to ruffle feathers in Beijing. China is already suspicious at the emergence of what is being called the "axis of democracy" in the Asia-Pacific region, with India, US, Japan, and Australia upgrading their defence ties.

India, however, would like to be viewed as a "neutral" player rather than being projected as a counterweight to China or being part of any grand strategy to "contain" China. It has steadily improved its bilateral relationship with China, with several military CBMs being implemented along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control.
But yes, India continues to remain apprehensive about China's deep strategic ties with Pakistan, its rapid modernisation of the 2.5-million-strong People's Liberation Army and military infrastructure build-up in Tibet.

This was reflected in defence ministry's presentation to the visiting US delegation, led by deputy under-secretary of defence for Asia and Pacific, Richard P Lawless, during the first Indo-US defence joint working group meeting on Tuesday.

"We gave the US side our assessment of China's maritime strategy and growing naval expansion in the Indian Ocean Region. China is rapidly increasing military and maritime links with countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar," said a source.

India, of course, is trying to counter these moves. The latest one came on Tuesday itself, with Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta holding talks with his visiting Indonesian counterpart, Admiral Slamet Soebijanto. With the Indonesian parliament recently ratifying a defence agreement with India, the two nations will now hold a joint naval exercise next year.

The US, of course, is deeply worried about China, viewing it as the one country with the "greatest potential to compete militarily" with it.

They found people with two copies of a "fat" version of a gene had a 70% higher risk of obesity than those with none, and weighed 3kg (6.5lb) more. The work in Science by the Peninsula Medical School and Oxford University studied data from about 40,000 people. The findings suggest that although improving lifestyle is key to reducing obesity, some people may find it harder to lose weight because of their genes.

The team then looked at other studies involving 40,000 people searching for this FTO mutation, and confirmed that it was associated with body weight. People carrying one copy of the "fat" FTO variant had a 30% increased risk of being obese compared to a person with no copies of that version. Those carrying two copies of the variant had a 70% increased risk of being obese, and were on average 3kg (6.6lb) heavier than a similar person with no copies.

Professor Andrew Hattersley of the Peninsula Medical School said this could explain why two people can seem to eat the same things and do the same amount of exercise yet one may struggle to lose weight more than the other. He said: "The typical message has been that if you are overweight it is due to sloth and gluttony and it is your fault. "This work is suggesting that there is also a genetic component."

And he said although a 3kg difference in weight sounds relatively small, it is enough to make a big change in the risks of obesity. Dr Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said this could have very helpful consequences for public health as about one in six white Europeans carried two copies of the variant. "Obesity is one of the most challenging problems for public health in the UK," he said.

"The discovery of a gene that influences the development of obesity in the general population provides a new tool for understanding how some people appear to gain weight more easily than others."

If these can be grown into fully developed sperm, which the researchers hope to do within five years, they may be useful in fertility treatments. The researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster and the Medical School of Hannover isolated adult stem cells - cells that have the ability to become many types of tissue in the body - from bone marrow samples taken from male volunteers. This is the first time human spermatagonial cells have been made artificially in this way.

And lead researcher Professor Karim Nayernia, now at the North-east England Stem Cell Institute based at the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, said he hopes his investigations will mean he might one day be able to treat young men rendered infertile by chemotherapy. He said: "We're very excited about this discovery.

"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments." He warned that manipulating stem cells to develop into mature sperm could cause permanent genetic changes in the sperm, making the cells unsafe to use in fertility treatments.

However, Dr Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said: "This kind of work will be very useful in helping us understand the biology of how sperm are made. "That in itself may provide some insight into why things sometimes go wrong and may lead to new approaches to treating male infertility."

The findings were presented at an international fertility conference and are published in Gamete Biology: Emerging Frontiers on Fertility and Contraceptive Development.

You have only to look at the implosion of Ukraine's fledgling democratic institutions to see the effectiveness of the new tactics the Russian bear is using to claw back its influence over its former empire. Moscow has not forgiven Ukraine for its Orange Revolution in late 2004, which saw Kiev sweep away decades of Soviet repression and assert its desire to become a functioning, Western-style democracy. On that occasion, the Kremlin resorted to the decidedly unsubtle tactic of poisoning Viktor Yushchenko, the principal pro-democracy campaigner, who, thanks to the prompt intervention of a team of Viennese toxicologists, survived the assassination attempt and went on to win the election.

Since then, Moscow has adopted a different approach, seeking to use its new economic strength to intimidate its former ally. Early last year, it switched off the oil and gas supplies, in effect leaving the country without heat or light in the depths of a Ukrainian winter. More recently, the Russians reached for their cheque books and bought off enough parliamentarians (the going rate for a Ukrainian MP is said to be £2.5 million) to render the democratic process unworkable, to the extent that President Yushchenko, as he now is, was compelled this week to prorogue parliament and call new elections.

The reason the Russians have gone to such lengths to eradicate the seeds of Ukrainian democracy is their fear that, left to its own devices, Kiev would follow the same path as other former Soviet republics and seek to guarantee its hard-won freedom by joining the EU and Nato.This is anathema to Moscow, where the heady days of glasnost and perestroika, and the prospect of Russia becoming a democracy, are but a distant memory.

These days, Vladimir Putin, the autocratic Russian President, makes no secret of his contempt for the EU and Nato, which he insists took unfair advantage of Russia's economic weakness in the 1990s to advance into areas in eastern Europe that the Kremlin regards as its natural sphere of influence.Putin wants to restore Russia to the superpower status it enjoyed under the Soviet Union, whose demise he describes as "the geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century".

It is often said that the primary cause of the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s was the fall in oil prices to $10 a barrel. Now, with crude prices averaging $60, Moscow is awash with petrodollars, not least because of the brutal manner in which Putin has renationalised the nation's lucrative energy resources, with opponents driven into exile or, in the case of Mikhail Khordokovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil conglomerate, handed lengthy jail sentences in Siberia.

And Putin has not been slow to use these riches to fund a range of subversive activities aimed at destabilising and reclaiming the former satellite states. Apart from usurping Ukrainian democracy, the Kremlin has placed an economic stranglehold on Georgia and Moldova, arguably two of the weakest former Soviet republics.
Similar pressures have been applied to the Baltic states, which, despite joining both the EU and Nato, have found themselves subjected to economic and political intimidation by their former occupiers.

It is against this unpromising background that Putin has found the confidence to confront the West, citing the Bush Administration's plans to establish missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic as his justification. The intended purpose of America's national missile defence project is to protect both America and most of Europe from nuclear missile attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.
Not for Putin the détente of the Reagan-Thatcher era that ended three decades of nuclear stand-off.

On the contrary, the Russian President seems intent on using the proposed American missile deployment to fund a new East-West arms race. Russia's all-powerful security council - which reports directly to Putin - announced earlier this month that it needed a new military "configuration" to counter the threat posed by Nato's expansion and Washington's missiles, and Russia's military budget has been dramatically increased.
Nor is there any realistic prospect of Putin being dissuaded from initiating a second Cold War against the West.

The Kremlin's suppression of political opposition has been so successful that the most vociferous opponents today are the likes of Garry Kasparov, the former chess grand master, whose bravery in denouncing Putin's autocratic tendencies is not matched by any groundswell of public support. Kasparov and his supporters have been successful in organising a number of street protests - more are planned for this weekend - but, in Putin's Russia, such open defiance is more likely to see Kasparov languishing in Siberia than taking over the Kremlin.