In fact, while the Saakashvili government s clampdown showed the structural weaknesses of Georgia s democracy, the aftermath has also shown that Georgia s Western ambition remains intact, because the government understands that it cannot afford any long term deviation from democratic norms.

With Putin s current clampdown on civil society, re nationalization of key segments of the economy, failure to develop any political approach to resolving the conflict in Chechnya, and cultivation of imperial nostalgia, Russia is killing its only chance to matter in the future.

A clampdown on messaging services used for dissemination of pornography in step with the rapid development of the messaging services market, criminal elements have utilized the technology to spread pornography and other harmful material, or even to run businesses around such activity.

As the International Herald Tribune reports, one aspect of the Chinese government s campaign against corruption is a clampdown on expensive gifts. As a result, according to Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets, it s no longer acceptable to have a big chunky watch on your wrist.

In the period 2002 2004 many nationals of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea sought asylum in a number of ways such as entering embassies and schools in other countries this led to a clampdown by the authorities of certain of those countries, including arrests and refoulement.

The fate of the museum and the school is part of the wider clampdown on freedom of expression and behavior in Putin s third presidential term. Dissidents are routinely dubbed deviants, fifth columnists, and traitors, as the regime leads a drive for national unity based on religion, tradition, and paranoid rhetoric.

In China and other emerging market economies, delays in policy tightening could fuel a rise in inflation that forces a tougher clampdown later, with China, in particular, risking a hard landing. There is also a risk that capital inflows to emerging markets will be mismanaged, thus fueling credit and asset bubbles.

But then the housing market stalled, as fears of a property bubble spurred a government clampdown on credit, leaving the stock market the place for middle class savers to put their money. The ensuing boom was a mirror image of the pattern between 1998 and 2001, when the housing market was liberalized and the stock market fell.

It was, in fact, the authorities clampdown on margin borrowing, together with a loss in confidence as global markets declined, that is thought to have triggered the market meltdown. And that, too, is a feature of a market dominated by small traders the herding behavior that fuels major booms and busts becomes more prevalent, because individuals assume that others have better information.

For roughly four years, he represented the best that the West and India could hope for in a Pakistani leader someone with military authority, who seemed convinced that his own survival, and the interests of his state, demanded a clampdown on terrorism. I never thought I d say this, one senior national security figure in New Delhi said to me, but Pervez Musharraf may be India s best hope for peace with Pakistan.