As expected, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party won a landslide victory in yesterday’s parliamentary elections, garnering over 63% of the vote as of this writing, which will give it 70% of the seats in the Duma, or national assembly.

The Communist Party won only 11.6%. Its leader, Gennady Zuganov, cried foul, claiming the elections were fraudulent, a pretty rich accusation from the party that never held an honest vote in its entire history.

Two other small parties that vote with Putin’s United Russia gained about 15% of the vote. One of them is led by the Russian neo-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Liberal, western-oriented parties were shut out.

President Vladimir Putin’s earthy phrases seemed to have captured Russia’s current muscular mood. Reacting to sharp western criticism of Russia’s parliamentary elections, Putin, playing `Vlad the Bad,’ warned western powers not to `poke their snotty noses’ in his nation’s business.

Putin, who has been increasingly outspoken of late, mocked President George Bush’s double standard in accusing Russia of dubious elections, squashing opposition, and roughing up dissenters while ignoring similar behavior by US ally Georgia. He could have also added other key US clients like Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. (more…)

LONDON – When I met with Pakistan’s former – and likely next - prime minister here in London, Benazir Bhutto looked remarkably relaxed considering she had just flown in from New York and was about to shortly launch a political revolution in Pakistan.

Since we have known one another for years, the mood was informal and congenial, but the subject matter of our lengthy, one-on-one talk fizzed with political electricity and high drama.

Miss Bhutto was cautiously optimistic about the coming months. However, her view of current events in Pakistan was grim. `The situation is ugly,’ she said. Days earlier, many of her Pakistan People’s Party supporters had been beaten with bricks by the police and seriously injured. Pakistan is facing growing violence between the military, Islamic militants, and tribal insurgents. Early this week, over 250 Pakistani soldiers and tribesmen were killed in heavy fighting in Waziristan. (more…)

The growing unrest and mass street demonstrations that have flared across Myanmar in recent weeks may herald an extremely dangerous period for this nation formerly known as Burma.Military-ruled Myanmar is extremely difficult to enter and bans foreign journalists. This writer has managed to slip into Myanmar three times. On the last, I was told the secret police were actually conducting bed checks in people’s homes in the capital Yangon (formerly Rangoon)to ensure no trouble-makers from the rebellious northern states were in town.

On my second visit, I eluded the secret police and got to see the nation’s Noble prize-winning democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi in her home, where she has been under house arrest for 17 years.

The crisis in Myanmar seems a simple morality drama. The saintly Suu Kyi is held like a bird in a cage by a junta of brutal, wicked generals, who until recently called themselves the wonderfully Orwellian name of `State Law and Order Council,’ or SLORC for short. In 1988, the junta’s soldiers crushed student demonstrations, killing 3,000. After Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, the generals annulled the voted and declared martial law. (more…)

MUNICH – Private armies have a very sinister reputation in Europe. Memories still linger of Germany’s post WWI army veterans, the`Stahlhelm,’ and Nazi Brownshirts, who battled Communists street toughs here in Munich and Berlin. Europeans remember Italy’s fascist Blackshirts and, most recently, Serb neo-fascist gangs like Arkan’s `Tigers’ and the `White Eagles’ who committed some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Germany also remains haunted by folk memory of the hordes of blood-crazed mercenaries who turned much of this nation into a wasteland during the savage 30 Year’s War. The name of the great mercenary captain, Wallenstein, still resounds, and of those most feared mercenaries of all, the ferocious Swiss, who once terrorized Europe. Wrote Machiavelli: `where there is gold and blood, there are the Swiss.’ The Vatican’s Swiss Guard is a faint reminder of the `furia Helvetica.’

Small numbers of mercenaries have been used in many modern wars, from Vietnam to Central America. The most famed modern mercenary force is France’s tough Foreign Legion.

The rise of powerful mercenary armies within the United States, and their use in Iraq and Afghanistan, is an entirely new, deeply disturbing development. (more…)

I recently read about a condition psychiatrists call `jamais vu.’ (more…)

The Bush Administration may be preparing to lash out at old ally Pakistan, which Washington now blames for its humiliating failures to crush al-Qaida (more…)

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature and basis of knowledge. How do we know things? It also studies the veracity of “truth.” (more…)

There is panic in Ottawa, Washington, Jerusalem and European capitals over Hamas’s stunning military rout of Fatah in the Gaza Strip. (more…)

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. (more…)

Anyone who wants to understand what really goes on in the Mideast should have a look at the scandal that erupted earlier this month over the outsized character of Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. (more…)

As Washington and Moscow exchange increasingly angry accusations and rebukes these recent weeks, it is hard to avoid a sense of Cold War deja vu. (more…)

In 1961 I went to Spain to visit my godfather, Count Ilyas Toptani, who had married the Duchess of Valencia. (more…)

The noted British parliamentarian Enoch Powell famously observed, `all political careers end in failure’. (more…)

Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. (more…)

France’s first round of presidential elections on Sunday was billed as a dramatic leap into the future. (more…)

The death last Sunday of six Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan reminds us of Santayana’s famous maxim that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. (more…)

When I was in Singapore recently, I learned about two interesting anti-terrorism initiatives:

• Detained terrorism suspects on that island state are being cured of their militancy by Islamic counselling. (more…)

President George Bush charges that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip last week to Syria was undermining US foreign policy. He’s absolutely correct. (more…)

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. (more…)

Let’s suppose that I interviewed David Duke, the Louisiana politician who rails against what he calls Jewish supremacy, (more…)

The war on terrorism has become counter-productive because it has degenerated into a war on Muslims, on Muslim religious institutions and on Muslims’ freedom of speech. (more…)

NEW DELHI - This week, India’s feisty press was gleefully speculating that Pakistan’s embattled President Pervez Musharraf, (more…)

As the West looks anxiously at Iraq and Afghanistan, dangerous cracks are opening up in Lebanon ­ and the White House is determined to prop up Fouad Siniora’s government

(more…)

The Bush Administration’s serial blunders in the Mideast have not only seriously undermined American influence over the region, they have opened the way for new, emerging superpowers to vie for its energy resources. (more…)