When the Supreme Court's decision Buckley v. Valeo invalidated in 1976 the first serious post-Watergate attempt to regulate campaign finance, the New York Times did not even mention the case. This week's decision, Citizens United v. FEC, which invalidates a three-decade effort to limit the impact of money on politics, took two-thirds of the paper's front page.

Congo, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Sin Kiang and Honduras, are hot spots that have turned or are likely to turn violent. But the Middle East is different in two ways. It is the longest continuously war-ridden area in modern history. And at least since September 11, it has become a domestic American issue. US soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even more than in the Cairo address, the Nobel speech will mark the Obama legacy. The subject is pithy, combining defense, foreign affairs and international law on the most difficult subject that human kind has ever addressed: war. Thanks to the entreaty of the Nobel committee, which forced the US president to articulate his vision of best use for the most powerful military machine in the world.

Taif is 20 this year, and many of the questions posed by the accord have yet to be answered in Lebanon. Political reform and further amendment of the Constitution have been at the heart of the political debate relating to the future of Lebanon since the end of the Civil War in 1990. Among several things, Taif mandates a process of "political deconfessionalization," and.

On December 6, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI, website www.acri.org.il) released a 73-page report on democracy and human rights in Israel, entitled on "Human Rights - On Condition, Democracy - On Condition." The chapters of the report develop the characteristic list of an authoritarian state: "Freedom of Expression - as long as you have nice things to say.

Most of us vividly recall the march to the war in Iraq. Many marched against the war, as I did in Brussels in February 2003. Yet I actively supported the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. Hence the basic dilemma. How could you end the dictatorship (my preferred term for "regime change") without large-scale violence? How could you end Saddam Hussein's four-decade rule without occupying Baghdad?

How has the largest congregation of states in modern history become so uninspiring, despite the unprecedented European peace with the establishment of the European Community in successive treaties since 1952? With 27 members over a continent famed since the Roman Empire for continuous domestic and interstate wars until 1945.

Iraq is at a historical crossroads on the bumpy road to democracy. The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) has all but completed the task assigned to it by the 2005 Constitution under the chairmanship of Sheikh Humam Hamoudi, the delegate of the largest parliamentary bloc, together with Dr. Fouad Masum, the head of the Kurdish bloc.

It is time for a postmortem analysis in Afghanistan. With all the misery that has befallen the wretched peoples of Afghanistan over 40 years of invasions and civil wars, the mess is far from over. By all accounts, the elections were heavily rigged by the president. The "independent" electoral commission's head declaring Karzai the winner before the second round was cancelled.

Afghanistan's presidential runner-up Abdullah Abdullah has withdrawn from the presidential race. Hamid Karzai will move on, like Parviz Musharraf, Ahmadinejad, Emile Lahoud, Hosni Mubarak, and the scores of little dictators in the Middle East, and declare himself president next Saturday. The Afghanis will oppose him, as the decent people of Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt.