After three terms in office, it could hardly be otherwise. Despite the cliché, power does corrupt, and the late Blair era, like that of Margaret Thatcher before it, has been a squalid spectacle.

BRUSSELS The price of freedom, it is said, is eternal vigilance. But that price can take the form of morally squalid decisions in which innocent people bear the brunt of the cost of freedom s defense.

Of the three leading electoral coalitions that are challenging each other, the forces that supported the Orange Revolution seek a modern and democratic future for our country. The other bloc offers the near certainty of a return to a surly and squalid isolation perhaps the beginning of the end of our hard won independence.

Although overwhelmed, the Greek Cypriot community reacted with humanity, solidarity, and prudence. Initially, refugees camps were set up, but the Greek Cypriot government decided that while it will not surrender the refugees' claim eventually to return to their homes in the North, it would do its utmost in the interim not to leave them vegetating in squalid camps.

The center of Paris and other French cities may be grand, but many immigrants from North Africa and elsewhere live in squalid ghettos on the outskirts. Although the precise rate of unemployment for particular ethnic groups is not known (French law precludes collecting data by ethnic classification), anecdotal evidence suggests much higher levels of joblessness for immigrants and their descendants.

The humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda is one of the world's worst, with 1.6 million people internally displaced and living, some for 10 years, in squalid, insecure camps, with acts of brutality killing and maiming committed against the local populations, and with tens of thousands of children abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army to serve as child soldiers or as sex slaves.