When the Bolsheviks mounted their putsch against the tottering Provisional Government in October 1917, one of their first objectives was Petrograd’s grand Central Telegraph. The logic of those who wish to control the country today is little different: control the means of communicating to the masses, and the country is yours. One of Vladimir Putin’s first acts in power back in 2000 was to crack down on independent television stations; ever since, Russia’s TV screens have spouted whatever the Kremlin wants the Russian people to think.

By Barbie Nadeau

Even by Italian political standards, it was a bad week for Romano Prodi, Italy's now defunct prime minister. At various times over the past 20 months, it has seemed that the most Prodi's coalition had accomplished in power was, quite simply, not collapsing. Prodi's efforts to fight tax evasion and to reform various governmental entities were overshadowed by headlines about Neapolitan garbage and Spain bypassing Italian per capita GDP.  Was there really anywhere for the former economics professor to go but down?

By Christopher Werth

This week markets around the world suffered their biggest drop since 9/11, as fears of a U.S. recession brought turmoil to global share prices. The U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut of three-quarters of a percentage point buoyed markets in Asia, but did little for those in Europe, where fears of what’s to come won the day. Newsweek’s Christopher Werth spoke with Roger Bootle, Managing Director of Capital Economics, a research consultancy in London. Excerpts:

What, currently, is the outlook for the markets?
I suspect that they’re probably going to fall a fair bit further over the next few months.

What projections can you make on how bad things might get?
I think that recession will be only narrowly avoided on both sides of the Atlantic, if at all. Probably still, the most likely thing is that the US doesn’t fall into recession, but the chances of it are growing by the week.

By Andrew Ehrenkranz

On the eve of a proposed million-man opposition protest rally in Kenya recently, a spokesman for the “Taliban” in Kenya called NEWSWEEK, asking to meet somewhere in Nairobi. The man, who called himself Abraham, said he had urgent news of an 11th hour meeting between Kikuyu and Luo tribal elders in a Nairobi market, where they were attempting to broker a truce before an all-out war broke out in the slums of Nairobi. He tried to convey the contours and severity of the situation for his Luo people, of whom the Taliban claim to be defending, but one simple question needed an answer: Of all the names in the world for a group of 100 percent Christian, mainly large African men from Nairobi, why use the name “Taliban”?

“People already knew the name,” he said of "Taliban", reminding me that his so-called volunteer Luo defense force has nothing to do with the Afghani Taliban, or for that matter, the brand of terrorism practiced by Islamic fundamentalists. “The Taliban defended their people and their way of life. So are we.”

In Brazil these days, armor is the new normal. From bullet-proof luxury rides to the caveirão, a police assault wagon built like a tank, Brazilians have fortified themselves against the hazards of modern living. In Rio, one evangelical Christian church in a crime-ridden favela is raising a steel-plated, 30-meter containing wall to keep the flock from harm's way when the shooting starts. So fashionable is the concept these days that Brazilians have even come to believe that their charmed economy is innured to world economic downturn.

No doubt there is some ground for optimism. Inflation is under control. Hard currency reserves are topping $160 billion, a continental record. Foreign debt is history. And while the largest economy on earth skates on the edge of recession, Brazilian officials confidently project growth of 5 percent or more this year, or, if the international markets tank, "maybe a little less," shrugs Finance Minister Guido Mantega. Give us your best shot, the bulls in Brazil seem to be saying, for Latin America's drowsy  giant has not only stirred but "decoupled" - or broken free - from the vagaries of the globe's overlord economy. 

Photo: Associated Press

"Ego," the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once memorably observed, "is the little Argentine in all of us." The truth of this pithy maxim never ceased to impress me during the 27 months when I was stationed in Buenos Aires in the late 1980s as Newsweek's South America correspondent. The Argentines' capacity for self-absorption seemed endless and would express itself in a number of ways, from the collective obsession with a storied past, when Argentina ranked among the world's ten richest countries in the early decades of the early 20th century, to the need to highlight their more European society and culture vis-a-vis those of their Latin American neighbors. To this day, the international news sections of Buenos Aires' leading dailies regularly feature stories analyzing how Argentina is factoring into the calculations of top policymakers in Washington, as if the editors at those newspapers can't quite bring themselves to tell readers that their country barely flickers on the radar screens of the Bush White House or Condoleezza Rice's State Department.

By Andrew Ehrenkranz 

credit: Simon Maina / AFP-Getty Images

When Barack Obama visited Kenya in 2006, a local beer called Senator promptly became a bestseller. Indeed, so closely did the beverage become associated with the U.S. presidential contender that visitors nowadays don’t even need to get the name right—just ask at a local bar for a cold Obama and they’ll know exactly what to serve you.

Obama is a revered figure here in Kenya, where his father, also called Barack, grew up in the tiny village of Kogelo, near Lake Victoria. And even as Kenya’s post-election turmoil continues to claim lives, the citizens of this African nation are keeping up with the political fortunes of their favorite son. They’re gratified that he’s keeping up with theirs too. Indeed, with a ban on live news broadcasts keeping the rumor mill well fed, some even believe that the Illinois senator is actively intervening to help forge a political solution to the violent outbursts following the country’s disputed Dec. 27 ballot. He isn’t, given that he’s kind of busy right now, but Sammy Nyongesa, a member of the presidential campaign team for Raila Odinga says his boss has been in email contact with the American senator. According to Nyongesa, Obama wrote to Odinga—who is protesting the victory claims by incumbent President Mwai Kibaki in an election widely considered irregular—asking Odinga to persuade his supporters to bring peace. Odinga’s response: “I’m doing what I can.”

With news of U.S. and Iranian ships passing uncomfortably close in the night off the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, it's time once again to consider what's on the minds of the power-brokers in Tehran. Was the incident the result of rogue Revolutionary Guard ship commanders or part of a deliberate escalation by Iran? That the incident was announced by the Pentagon is noteworthy, as Iran might have been expected to toot its own horn, were it proud of the maneuvers. (Think of the drama it whipped up over the British seamen captured in the same waterway back in 2007.) This time, the official line from Tehran is that this was the "normal" kind of bumper-to-bumper traffic in the strait.

This is the foreign policy parlor game that used to be called "Kremlinology" during the old Cold War, and has no name at all now. But all intelligent guessing aside, one thing is clear: as a contentious symbol in the struggle between reformists and conservatives in Iran, America remains without peer. In legislative elections scheduled for March 14, conservative supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are attempting to maintain their dominance by appealing to a sense of nationalism -- specifically touting the president's success in countering U.S. threats and "intimidation." For their part, the reformists are playing on the suspicions of many Iranians that Ahmadinejad's provocations risk too much in the service of too little.

While the reformists have been distracted in recent days by the usual controversies over who can vote (the conservative parliament just passed a bill raising the voting age) and which of their candidates can run (an unelected government body can toss out any candidate deemed to be insufficiently "qualified"), the conservatives have, appropriately enough, had their analytic eyes trained on America.

Here's the revealing close to an otherwise windy tract in the January 5 edition of Iran's conservative Jomhuri-ye Eslami:

"Due to the continuous failures of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan, the circumstance is extremely difficult for the Republicans inside America. The situation is so dramatic in the Republican camp that an unknown candidate like [Gov. Mike] Huckabee has won the internal Republican election [referring to the Iowa caucus]. Huckabee's victory sends this message to Bush and his administration that they have lost their popularity even amongst their own party members. The Democrats have also faced a similar situation. Due to their failure to take the Bush administration into account the people do not trust the main body of the Democrats anymore. ... The victory of Obama and Huckabee proves the failure of both leaders of the two main parties in America and a gradual deterioration of America's power in general."

The purpose of such agit-prop is unmistakable. To any voters worried about American reprisal in the face of Iran's nuclear policy, the message from Ahmadinejad's forces is that the U.S. electorate is sure to blink first and change political course -- like a ship in the strait -- as part of an increasing powerlessness. Therefore, a tack in the direction of Iran's own "agents of change" in the legislative elections would be not only unnecessary, but the renunciation of a great victory. In this light, it's not hard to understand how the decision to instigate some mischief on the Strait of Hormuz might have been conceived. And while there's no guarantee such stunts will continue to work on Iran's voters, Iran's conservatives must privately be weeping over the coming end to the era of such ready-made propaganda in the Bush 43 years. Just as we no longer have an analogue for "Kremlinology," so, too, will they be forced to discard some expired political language at approximately this time next year.