On 18 June, in Pichori, in the lower Gali district, two UNOMIG patrol teams comprising 11 military observers and two interpreters were robbed by three armed masked men.

A group of masked pro separatists held back by riot police pelted them with eggs and hurled powder paint, creating dark clouds of dust in streets that would usually be thronged with tourists.

Accordingly, he explained that the denial of European Union membership to Turkey and the refusal to refer to Europe's Christian heritage in the European Constitution in fact masked the rejection of the notion that Europe is already multicultural.

Putin s military build up and modernization of the past decade was also fueled by energy exports. But Russia s latest energy windfall has masked Putin s incompetent economic management, with growth and government revenues now entirely reliant on the hydrocarbons sector.

Cross borrowing from the accounts of closed missions in order to keep the Organization, the international tribunals and active peacekeeping operations viable simply masked the real issue of arrears and the Fifth Committee's inability to address that issue substantively.

All of this uncertainty reveals critical flaws in the Asian century s foundations flaws that, until recently, were masked by the region s rapid economic growth. Indeed, vast production chains linking businesses across countries gave the impression of a uniquely Asian superstructure.

Southern eurozone countries such as Italy and Spain have suffered from rising competition with China in textiles and light manufacturing industries. But just as the pre crisis credit boom masked underlying structural problems, post crisis credit constraints have greatly amplified the downturn.

Lack of reasonably independent regulation and competent public administration or, worse, one person dictatorships lead inexorably to economic waste and inefficiency, and eventually to political turmoil. This is true even in cases like Venezuela, where large oil revenues masked the underlying weakness for a while.

Attention is therefore shifting to the second narrative, which suggests that the advanced economies fundamental capacity to grow by making useful things has been declining for decades, a trend that was masked by debt fueled spending. More such spending will not return these countries to a sustainable growth path.

Successive governments staffed with unqualified politicians have failed dismally to carry out the core governmental functions of maintaining law and order, providing the basic services expected of modern societies, and promoting economic growth. India s high performing private sector has so far masked the failure of the Indian state.

The European Constitution has little to do with any of these challenges, but a majority of French people has started questioning the strategy that has long masked France s diminishing status. They are alarmed by what they see as the domination of Anglo Saxon economic principles the last nail in the coffin of France s mythical exception.

It is founded on base emotions rather than Soviet era, ideological motivations. Though Putin has tried to stoke a popular desire for empire with his Crimea annexation and intervention in eastern Ukraine, these actions amount to little more than open theft by masked men in the dead of night they have little chance of begetting lasting glory.

Millions of rural Chinese annually flood into the country s cities in search of employment but China s export led growth, which previously masked the macroeconomic costs of corruption and excessive state intervention, is slowing. As China enters an era of more subdued growth amid increased competition from other low cost countries, this damage will become increasingly apparent and increasingly destructive.

WASHINGTON, DC The recent governance controversy at JPMorgan Chase has masked a much larger issue. Regardless of Jamie Dimon s victory in retaining his dual role as CEO and chairman of the board, the more important failure on display was that of the board of directors itself a problem that affects almost all of the world s megabanks.

An undervalued currency also tends to produce an unbalanced growth model of the opposite kind an outsize tradable sector and insufficient domestic aggregate demand. Because the non tradable sector in advanced economies tends to create more jobs, this model can lead to an employment problem (even if it is partly masked by cutting hours rather than workers).

From the standpoint of growth and employment, public and private debt masked an absence of productivity growth, declining competitiveness in the tradable sector, and a range of underlying structural shortcomings including labor market rigidities, deficiencies in education and skills training, and underinvestment in infrastructure. Debt drove growth, creating aggregate demand that would not have existed otherwise.

The weakness of the Russian economy and its highly leveraged banks and corporations, in particular, which was masked in recent years by the windfall brought by spiking oil and gas prices, burst into full view as the global economy tumbled. Saddled with a rust belt infrastructure, Russia further disqualifies itself with dysfunctional and revanchist politics and a demographic trend in near terminal decline.

This underlying debility has been masked by high energy prices, which, over the 14 years of President Vladimir Putin s rule, have allowed Russia to combine the features of a kleptocracy with per capita income growth sufficient to quell dissent and create a shopping mad middle class. The accumulation of reserves from the oil and gas industries can be used to develop much needed infrastructure.

Though today s biomedical science claims to search for repairs of nature s defects, too many of its practitioners behave as if their real purpose were only to gain the mythical immortality of precedence, at whatever cost to themselves or others. Denial of the fear of mortality and projection of the suppressed wish to transcend nature are the marks of a masked effort to create a biomedical science at war with its own stated purposes.