The parallel between bewildering and apparently meaningless art and unintelligible financial products is damning rather than reassuring.

The most damning criticism of McCain s plan is that it would launch a new Cold War between states labeled democracies and autocracies.

Western observers could accept the exiles assurances that their proposals on autonomy are negotiable and not bottom line demands, rather than damning them before talks start.

And where Governments fail, their own peoples are the victims, as United Nations Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka's damning assessment of the situation in Zimbabwe only too graphically shows.

These findings raise damning suspicions about the literacy levels that successive Indian governments have claimed to achieve. If the state of primary education is this bad, will the disadvantaged classes ever stand a chance?

Bush also gave him his backing on human rights concerns, which, coming from the gentleman responsible in the eyes of most of the world for Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, is perhaps damning with faint praise.

The crackdown on freedom of the press, the rule of law, and electoral processes in Venezuela as reported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and, most recently, in a damning, 300 page report by the Inter American Human Rights Commission has been steadily worsening.