Japan has not given up its past ambition the dream of having the whole of Asia at hand.

It is time that Israel took its boot off Gaza s windpipe.

It appears that AQIM is consolidating its grip on Northern Mali.

At the same time, the state has developed a stronger grip on investors and different media channels and newspapers.

The expression of this desire is especially important now that the world is gripped by a terrifying economic crisis.

We need to know why some forms of collective irrationality gain a stronger grip on us than others.

The title of Prime Minister was only revived in 1990, when the People's Revolutionary Party gradually released its hold on power.

Europe needs, first and foremost, to break the vicious circle of recession, unemployment, and austerity that now has it in its grip.

Estonia's return to independence became possible as the Soviet Union faced internal regime challenges, loosening its hold on the outer empire.

Israel continued to build and expand illegal settlements, tighten its grip on water and natural resources and detain Syrian citizens in its jails.

Before the end of the first act the audience could tell as well as the Players that she d lost her grip, and soon they were all embarrassed for her.

In fact, the government s success in clamping down on corruption, especially at sub national levels, will be a litmus test of its legitimacy.

)At any rate, all scholars accept that during the 11th century, Pagan consolidated its hold of Upper Burma, and established its authority over Lower Burma.

Europe undoubtedly needs Russian gas, but fears that this gives Russia a monopolistic stranglehold over Europe are exaggerated.

By trying to play by the old rules, he committed several mistakes that may ultimately cost him his job and the Bhutto family its hold on power.

Yet, despite these authoritarian leaders apparently solid grip on power, ensuring that a relative takes over is not as simple as it seems.

The Taliban, with the active support of the Pakistani military, would certainly make a run for Kabul to replay the 1996 power grab.

With ISIS jihadists controlling important petroleum resources in Syria and Iraq, Xi Jinping s government will be hoping to secure its oil supply in the broader region.

Israel had tightened its grip on the water resources of the occupied Syrian Golan through two companies, Hatal and Merokot which exploited the waters of the local rivers and hot springs.

The Western press has, up until now, often portrayed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev s term in office as a time of liberalization, a period when the Russian government is beginning to loosen its authoritarian grip on society.

And China, seeking to tighten its grip on Tibet, has worked to control the traditional process of finding the reincarnation of any senior lama that passes away.

To support this effort, China s government should loosen its grip on the exchange rate, while maintaining appropriate capital controls. Renminbi internationalization should not be a policy priority.

They are getting away with their power grab even though it goes against the Maastricht Treaty, which excludes nationality as a criterion for membership on the Executive Board.

So far, the big countries have been able to get away with their power grab because the small ones have been too disunited to launch an effective counterattack.

But the history of closing societies shows that nudity and forced or degrading sexualized practices become, consciously or unconsciously, part of the state's consolidation of power.

Rather than heralding a new era of freedom, the Internet is enabling Chinese authorities to perfect totalitarian control in a way that puts the rulers in George Orwell s 1984 to shame.

Perhaps the government believed that mass protests with placards denouncing the EU as a fig leaf for revived German domination of Europe would strengthen its hand.

The aim is praiseworthy to ensure that aid will be unambiguously beneficial, and won t merely be exploited by bad governments to extend their hold on power.

Hu s government has also tightened controls over the media. Reports on peasant and worker demonstrations against corrupt officials and illegal property confiscations have been banned.

Decades old, apparently immovable autocracies are finding their hold on power unhinged change is invading their static environs.

When US global dominance was unquestioned, as in the 1990 s, it made sense for Israel to secure its long term future by maintaining a stranglehold over the US Congress.

Meanwhile, Spain's geostrategic use of the Canary Islands to spearhead its colonial ambitions in North Africa by preserving its hold on other colonial enclaves in Morocco was violating the most basic rights of the people of those areas and of the entire region.

I strongly opposed the international call a year ago to boycott Israel s universities. But the Gaza blockade means that Israel boycotts Palestinian academic life.

It was the beginning of America s global war on terror in 2001, however, that brought the political march of the Islamist parties to a screeching halt, as it provided an excuse for the government to crack down on the Malay right and the PAS.

The Pakistani military finds militant outfits useful tools to bleed their adversaries in India and Afghanistan, and has shown little inclination to clamp down on them, despite years of assurances that action would be taken to curb their activities.

In Sri Lanka, a decades long civil war between the Tamil minority and the Sinhala majority led to a bloody climax in 2009, after perhaps as many as 100,000 people had been killed since 1983.

With full cooperation from the country's social media and e commerce platforms, this system enables China's top security authorities to extend their grasp on citizens' data and make deft calculations concerning the political inclinations of any individual who participates in public life, both online and off.

This has both horizontal and vertical impacts horizontal in that it leads to the persecution of immediate family members and vertical in that it may lead to the stigmatization of subsequent generations, given that the authorities keep records of families as part of their iron grip on the population.

It seems like people in San Pedro Sula, while they recognize that the problem is very real with the gangs in the city, they also recognize that they can't spend their lives in fear. And they have to be willing to go out into the streets and reclaim it in a peaceful fashion, Janowitz says.

This is a matter of politics. As China attempts to tighten its grip on Hong Kong, Li is showing independence, and China s new rulers who, true to their communist roots, believe firmly in top down control do not like it one bit.

The Taliban, with the active support of the Pakistani military, would certainly make a run for Kabul to replay the 1996 power grab. But it wouldn t be easy, owing in part to the Taliban s fragmentation, with the tail (private armies and militias) wagging the dog.

I am not suggesting that sexually degrading practices are a conscious part of the TSA s new policy. But the history of closing societies shows that nudity and forced or degrading sexualized practices become, consciously or unconsciously, part of the state's consolidation of power.