Timothy Garton Ash writes that Vladimir Putin's Russia only "pretends to be" a democracy. "It calls itself a sovereign democracy. But the difference between a democracy and a sovereign democracy is like that between a jacket and a straitjacket. A liberal candidate for the presidency, Mikhail Kasyanov, has been disqualified from standing on what was almost certainly a fraudulent charge of technical irregularity. Dissenters such as the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov are roughed up and locked up. Most important media are directly or indirectly controlled by the Kremlin. ... We should use this moment to signal the beginning of a new chapter in our relations with Russia. Both the EU and, next year, the new American president should engage actively, but robustly with President Medvedev and his team. He is a relatively young man and said to be slightly more of a free marketeer than Putin. " (28/02/2008)

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"Whatever Putin is contemplating, Putinism will emerge as the victor in the upcoming transfer of power," writes the paper. "Well-staged events like the presidential election cannot belie the fact that it's been a while since Russia was a democracy. Yesterday, Amnesty International published a report that finds a dramatic drop in freedom of expression in Russia. Independent media have been silenced, the murder of journalists remains unexplained and police put down protests by the opposition. Today's Russia is led by gangs with close ties to the FSB security service. ... The only pluralistic element in Russian politics is the conflict between these gangs. And the Russian people have no say in this power play." (28/02/2008)

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"The Kremlin is oozing fear: fear of simple questions, of debates and basic responsibilities", explains Pilar Bonet, the daily's Moscow correspondent. "This fear is inculcated by the presidential administration with a subtle mixture of threats and warnings. The ghost of Stalin has yet to disappear and civil servants are naturally falling into old habits of self-defence developed during the Terror. ... This sinister dimension is not exclusively Russian heritage; it exists in other European countries too. But in the case of Russia, it is growing considerably. By sinister dimension, I mean the criminally conniving silences, non-clarified assassinations, the abortion or abandoning for political or economic reasons of inquiries against high dignitaries, the non-respect of institutional duties and, ultimately, the anxiety of citizens alone and vulnerable in the face of violence." (28/02/2008)

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Markus Ackeret finds it downright grotesque the way presidential hopeful Dmitry Medvedev tries to emphasize both his independence and his closeness to Vladimir Putin. "After two months of a dull election campaign, it looks like Medvedev can't separate himself from his father figure. He makes hardly any public appearances, and does not participate in discussions on television. ... The degree of influence to be granted this ill-defined, disappointingly boring Medvedev will be revealed only through his power-sharing with Putin as Prime Minister. He has repeatedly championed a strong presidential system as the only possible governmental form for Russia. Asked about his favourite location in Moscow, he recently told his interviewers at 'Itogi' - 'I am not original: it's the Kremlin. The heart of Russia.'" (28/02/2008)

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Rick Coolsaet, professor of international relations at the University of Gand, analyses the scope of the terrorist threat in an interview with Dominique Berns. "The motor of terrorism is, systematically linked to local context, to respective societies. But there is currently an international context that allows different local sources to be united in the image of a global threat: there exists among Muslims a feeling of humiliation and fear towards the West. And we, the westerners, have the impression that we are under threat from Islam. This reciprocal fear fuels a heavy atmosphere ... . In all history, all forms of terrorism have come to a dead-end, have never obtained the desired results. For whoever wants to see them, the signs of a rejection of Jihadist terrorism are now visible everywhere, including in Arab-Muslim countries." (25/02/2008)

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Interviewed by Jade Lindgaard, the journalist and altermondialist militant Naomi Klein explains that blogs are complementary to investigative journalism. "Blogs have become real alternative journalism, places where scandals can be denounced. To a certain extent they play the same role as the radio does, by repeating and sometimes hammering home information that comes from investigative journalism in the written press. ... . Stories protect you from the shock, soften impact. There is a certain way of telling a story, not just scattering facts. It is the loss of the story, of the collective story, that puts you in a state of shock. This is what makes blogs so exciting: they put information by definition anti-narrative, into context. What citizen journalism manages so well is to take facts and turn them into stories." (27/02/2008)

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NATO has reached its limits, says Sever Voinescu, commenting on the impending NATO summit in Bucharest. One of the reasons is the extension of the organization. "Obviously, since Romania and Bulgaria joined, NATO's door remains closed for the time being. Because the extension is hard to digest. Recently, high military functionaries from the 'old' NATO countries charged the new members of 'immediately passing along to Moscow what we discuss among ourselves.' ... Add to that the fact that it used be necessary for a would-be member country to prove it was stable and democratic. Now, membership is a route toward stability and democracy. The notion that the Balkans will stabilise through membership in NATO is misleading." (28/02/2008)

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A legal and political sensation - that is how Heribert Prantl sees the German Federal Constitutional Court's groundbreaking ruling on controversial online investigations. With their move, the judges have both limited the state's secret access to private computers and at the same time established a new fundamental right, "guaranteeing the confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems." Prantl writes, "This is the new basic right of the Internet citizen. It protects private computers and storage media, guards computer data against random access by the state, defends the character and privacy of citizens in the electronic age. At the same time, the Federal Constitutional Court's decision, which is excellent from a juridical and technical standpoint, does allow for governmental online investigations, but only under strict conditions. These conditions could have been tougher, and should be strengthened." (28/02/2008)

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The columnist Jacques Pilet sees Nicolas Sarkozy as "power mad". "The president, so applauded yesterday, is becoming the incarnation of his caricature. The insult he blurted out to a visitor at the Agriculture trade fair - 'pauvre con' (poor bastard) - will stick to his biography for a long time. How low into the depths of vulgarity can a head of state stoop ? On the same day he called repeat criminal offenders 'monsters', deemed French gastronomy the best in the world: the weight of words, a sense of nuance, totally escapes him. ... As for his foreign partners, they can't get over it. France has never been easy, but this is really too much. . . They are counting on time, on the experience of encounters to finally change the behaviour of this uncontrollable president. ... None of this is innocuous. Never, for example, have Franco-German relations been so poor, which is not good news for Europe, or for anyone else." (28/02/2008)

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In March 1968, up to 15,000 Polish Jews were deprived of their citizenship by the communist regime and forced to emigrate. Since October, the head of Poland's Shalom-Foundation, Gołda Tencer, has been awaiting an answer from President Lech Kaczyński to her demand that all those Poles who were robbed of their citizenship be simply re-naturalized. Speaking with Zuzanna Dąbrowska, Tencer also asks the president to apologize, on the 40th anniversary of this anti-Semitic campaign. "We are talking about a history that is very much alive, that not only exists in books but in people. It costs so little just to say, 'We are sorry.' Why can't anyone bring themselves to do it? ... For years I have been hearing about protocol, about formal hurdles. What's the big deal? I think you simply have to want to do it. And now is the right time." (28/02/2008)

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Four women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in Spain on Tuesday, February 26th, which brings to 17 the number of women killed by their partners since the beginning of January in this country. This 'black Tuesday' has provoked the reaction of political parties which, right through the election campaign [for the legislatives on March 9th] had bearly brought up the problem of wife-beating", explains the daily. "Spanish society is demanding efficient solutions to stymie this dramatic phenomenon. The terrible images of victims stabbed or shot dead have incited high demands of public powers. If it is true, according to official data, that 84,000 women currently benfit from protection mechanisms, precise measures will have to be adopted for these mechanisms to be less easy to violate." (28/02/2008)

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Following the latest protests against the reprinted Danish caricatures of Mohammed, a children's programme on Palestinian Hamas Al-Aqsa TV has broadcast a call to murder Danes, particularly caricature artist Kurt Westergaard. The newspaper is outraged. "Western politicians send billions to the Palestinian autonomous administration. In the next three years, the UN will transfer about 5 billion euros to them. Denmark has given economic support to the autonomous regime since 1996 and is due to contribute up to 16 million euros over the next three years. The Israeli neighbours have long had to live with the Palestinian repayment for dialog and concessions, in the form of rocket and suicide attacks. And in return for our Western money, we get a receipt stamped with hate-filled propaganda. And now, even a direct incitement to murder us." (28/02/2008)

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On Wednesday, February 27th, the European Commission announced that it is fining Microsoft €899 million for charging rivals too much for software information. The daily comments: "The company confirmed that it was 'trying to focus on steps that will improve things for the future'. Microsoft announced last week that it would take a significant step further by extending unilaterally the remedies that the commission originally had imposed to cover a wide range of applications and products. This move guarantees software developers unprecedented access to the secrets behind Microsoft's software ... and will facilitate far greater interoperability of all products on the market. [This] offers new opportunities to consumers. ... It has taken a long time but this increased Microsoft self-awareness of its responsibilities to the market and to consumers should be no less welcome for that." (28/02/2008)

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Art historian Wolfgang Ullrich thinks there is not enough criticism of contemporary art. "Instead of showering good will upon everything that pretends to be art, or fearfully avoiding everything modern - that is, instead of either gushing or keeping mum - you should carefully examine all that aspires to enter this canon. Each work must be judged on what it offers and whether it is worth serious examination, especially as there can be no established norms in evaluating art. Among the greatest failures in the field of art studies is that it is stuck in naïve wonderment, in a religiously worshipful approach to art. For many in the field, the hardest thing to do is take a critical approach." (28/02/2008)

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The daily deplores a lack of transparency in the European Parliament's spending. "The EU Ombudsman has threatened to make a finding of maladministration against the Parliament for suppressing, on the basis that publication would be 'an intrusion into family and or personal life', a list of 475 MEPs who benefit from a pension scheme worth 1,850 euro a month, two thirds funded by taxpayers. It is wide open to abuse because the third that MEPs pay is automatically deducted from office expenses ... . There are key questions here that should not have to be asked but do need to be answered. To whom, if anyone, do MEPs believe that they should be responsible ? Why is a free press deemed a menace to this institution ? In what other system would parliamentarians have to sign confidentiality agreements before being allowed to examine whether expenses have been improperly manipulated ? Why a cult of secrecy rarely seen this side of North Korea ?" (28/02/2008)

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