About the probability of success of Egypt's revolution

I really doubt that so far a real revolution has taken place in Egypt - no hard proof of that, alas. There occurred the toppling of Mubarak's regime by the military, who used popular support and the moment. I don't understand at all where all this infatuation with and enthusiasm for the military many Egyptian people feel comes from, since the military have never ever been a great fan of democracy, almost by definition - like a wolf playing the role of a custodian of a flock of ship.  Conscious revolutionaries would never ever have let the military get into power, let alone stay there as a 'temporary' guarantor of democracy. Military as a guarantor of democracy! Ha ha- the shortest funny story I've ever heard of. The military has been built and created for absolutely different purposes - to KILL PEOPLE or to manage them WITH FORCE - military force at that, and defend the ruling regime (itself included if this ruling regime is headed by the military) by force.
Anyway, let's hope that this situation has a short-term potential of development into something bigger than a trivial banal military dictatorship.
Then first thing to do is to throw the military out of power and out of office ahead of their screams and, subsequently put very tight limits on their powers in the Constitution FOR GOOD. The same goes for the intelligence and other special services. Both - the army and special  services must not  only be limited but also made utterly transparent: no 'state secrecy' any more in the form it's been known, any info which is to be made a secret must be unrestrictedly accessible for Parliament committees and some other independent controlling bodies, preferable public and publicly controlled directly too. Parliament committees must have not only an unrestricted access to any info and activity of those with weapons in their hands, but also supreme rights to monitor and control the activity, conduct special investigations and make public reports thereon.
Second, politically, there needs to be formed PEOPLE'S temporary governing body with great powers and only this could promise a good start now and some fundamental change. This organ must be composed only and only of socially significant figures who have NEVER EVER had anything to do with either former government and parliament, nor with any powerful government agency. Who have never been in politics at all. The history of every member of such people's counsel must be accessible to everyone in infinite details from the cradle to the first kiss, including the every single movement to the toilet. Then at least two elections to parliament must be planned at once by this body, organized and fulfilled. Every candidate must be cleaned for 120%, any detail of his biography must be accessible publicly. Only and only then there could be some tangible hope that this so called revolution could turn into some concrete fruits and bring some irreversible democratic change. Court proceedings and huge criminal prosecutions of the champions of the old regime must continue non-stop PUBLICLY. Lustration must be done on a national scale, and be of an unprecedented proportions, scope and clarity. EVERY SINGLE EGYPTIAN who directly or indirectly was involved in or connected with the former political system must be known to everyone.

A few comments on Norway apocalypse

To protect a country from such scale bombing and shooting two VERY SIMPLE things must be done: BAN gun possession & ammonium nitrate (this type of fertilizer) free sale. I understand this simple measure, that means any professional understood and understands this simple thing even better. Any specialized Government agency - its specialized anti-terrorist and explosion professionals - have known this for all their life. What can prevent anybody in Norway from bombing Norway? NOTHING, cos anybody can go to the garden shop by ammonium nitrate and make as much explosive as he wants. Any specialist knows it. All those governments including Norwegian one have talked for many years about their cooperative measures and info exchanges in their self-less fight against terrorism, and none of them have answered the simple question: 'What has been done to prevent ANYBODY who wants to blow up the country from easily doing so with ammonium nitrate?' NOTHING have been done DESPITE that there's not a shade of doubt that any man in the relevant agencies at least a bit closely connected professionally with this sphere. understood and understands the simple possibility of making explosives and explosions at will at any place at any time for anyone. WHY?? And who is to blame? They know that it is possible and no obstacles were on the way for anyone to commit an explosion, but NO-THING has been done. The only answer - they, government, from the very first DIDN'T WANT to close this possibility, though they could do so in a matter of a day. The same goes for small arms selling, possession and carrying. Is it so difficult to predict that with the current weapons laws anyone can organize in Norway '911' at will? Didn't the Government understand it?? Of course it did. That's their cooperative fight against terrorism for you. That's the protection they give you for your money. That's the importance of 'anti-terrorist wars' they wage in other countries at the expense of your, dear Norwegians, LIVES and money. Get it, taste it and eat it whole!
Now of course atrocious politicians will try do the everything in their power to turn a psychological and safety protection problem into a political one, try cynically to derive maximum dividends from this tragedy giving an impression of their importance and indispensability, giving the problem as much political color as  possible, although the only political objective consequence of this is that Police and Government of Norway should be criminally prosecuted for doing ZERO in terms of REAL provision of safety.
Can a man out of boredom start a war against a whole country, just to get into the history books? Easily, cos technically possible - Norway, and because there are ALWAYS a small percent of men never valuing the human life as such. So many all sorts of shoot-outs have been in the USA and Europe, but the scale was smaller because the lack of planning.
Can a man out of boredom start a war against a whole country, just to get into the history books? Easily, cos technically possible - Norway. There will be lots of political insinuations, but it looks like the problem and motives are closer to the grim prophecy of the movie 'Natural Born Killers' by Oliver Stone.
But a question must arise for Norwegians: why do they hold & pay their police & army? Wage war in Iraq & Afg? To patrol Oslo after a carnage with serious faces and frowned brows keeping up the pretense of having control and caring for safety of the people? No attack on democracy in Norway: such things happen because of lack of democracy: lack of people's control over the efficiency of Govt agencies, incl army police and intelligence.
Fact #1: no police on the island
Fact #2: police arrived only... wait for it... 40 min (!!) after the call to the island! They fight in Afghanistan, Iraq and God knows where else as they as to bring the good and SECURITY to some distant corners of the world and nations, but when it comes to protection of NORWEGIANS they come in 40 min, give an allowance for a terrorist to go the shop and restore the supply of ammunition if it wasn't sufficient to kill all people on the island. My foot! Even in slow Australia ambulance by helicopter reaches any site of the continent in less than 40 min, including the most inhabited wild areas of the bush. They fight with terrorism... If anyone at all fights with terrorism, its guys like Julian Assange and Bradly, keeping in mind who are the main terrorists - people in power, who like talk about democracy, but who are very little controlled by too poor semi-democracy and who do everything in their power to keep in place the gaping holes and the doors open for everyone who wants to blow the nation. Why no democracy in operation? Because Norwegians don't have any control over the governmental agencies and cannot influence their effectiveness.

Why did the West start a war against Gaddafi but not against Syria?

Needless to say how reluctant the West was to utter a single word against Yemen bloody government or against Bahrain etc for a lot of 'special interests' and 'special relationships'. There's also little doubt that relatively 'inimical' Syria traditionally used by the USA in its rhetoric as 'a medium strength bad guy' has been and still is all in all to the liking of the same USA and the West in general so long as it is not a democracy (one of the main priorities of the foreign policy of the West being to keep the privilege of democracy from the Middle East as long as possible) and is not a military or economic threat (no difference for that matter from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan etc etc). So this is too a self-explanatory question why the West has held out hope to the last that the Syrian government at last will be successful in suppressing its people and regaining the full state control (so that the traces of all the killings could be cleared and relegated to the category of 'suspected but not proved).
But as I see, there are still a lot of misunderstanding and delusion among the public about the belated but inexorable decision of the USA and other Western countries to get rid of - actually just KILL Gaddafi - a butcher and terrorist much worse and better proven than the recently killed Bin Laden, Gaddafi who up until recently had been to the liking of the West SO MUCH that had been not only completely legitimized and legalized by the latter, but embraced, kissed, wooed in all manner of ways and invited to all sort of parties personally by |Western leaders as a guest of honor.
Why did the West in general and the US in particular finally (however reluctantly and belatedly) take a decision to get rid of Gaddafi? The answer, I believe, is very simple. They - Western governments - just didn't have any other way-out of this situation (though, they DESPERATELY searched for one - no doubts about this). Otherwise, if they didn't, there would arise a ridiculously and most obviously and unprecedentedly 'perverse' and unhidden situation where after the Gaddafi crushed the rebellion the West would just continue oil business with him as unusual, despite the fact that the huge 'genocidal' killings and tortures by Gaddafi of its own people would be a 120% proven fact - just something like continuing the blossoming trade and investment relations with Hitler after the Holocaust had become a PROVEN fact. It would destroy to the ground and for evermore all this, however already flimsy, house of cards of the Western 'high moral democratic grounds', the myth about its promoting and supporting democratic values around the globe beyond the borders of its nations (of cause not all western democratic countries belong to 'the West' in this context, but an overwhelming majority of them; I don't want to blame e.g. Sweden which neither was involved in the sweet oil friendship with Gaddafi nor even bought a barrel of oil from Libya ). Of cause, there would be an ethically acceptable middle way - just leaving Libya alone with huge sanctions, denying its leaders from entry for good, freezing their accounts for good etc, and... of course (!) STOPPING BUYING OIL from Gaddafi and freezing all the oil investment projects there... But this quite legitimate way would be UNACCEPTABLE for the... of course.. these magic words trumping any morals, ethics and values, and justifying anything on Earth (if there's no direct PROOF of the crimes on a scale of Holocaust with thousands of skulls found and revealed publicly)  - 'SPECIAL INTERESTS'! - a key word combination which even Nobel prize laureate Obama is absolutely not shy about using as an argument for everything going against democracy in the rest of the world. Those special 'wallet interests' which for the USA and many of their Western allies in the end measure any democratic values and those very 'high moral grounds' in the units of oil barrels....

A letter to a friend: don't have illusions, there are no good governments

There's no such thing as a government that cares about its people - 'good government'. Also don't have any illusions about the governments of the so called developed democracies, or, as I call them, 'semi-democracies'. As such, generally, they don't care a damn about people's lives - they have never done in the past, they never do, and they never will as long as they exist in their present form. Even more to the point, for example, the Communist China government have the same will to improve the lives of the people unlike the American or British or French governments, or to be more honest the TOTAL ABSENCE thereof. In fact the paradox is that there are some reasons to suspect that actually Chinese government even do care a bit for the Chinese people, but the main distinction between the US and China governments is the limits of the involvement and the actual power with the existing political and legal systems. As to the state agencies (like the police or army or whatever), they care more about people's needs in the US than in China - again because of the place they occupy within the system, precisely because in China there's all those agencies have the priority to protect the Government and control the people. But the main difference is the system. If you put the American government in place of the Chinese one you not only don't see any positive change, but actually you might well become a witness of a serious deterioration by comparison. Just give the American government the same levers of control as those in the hands of their counterparts in China, and you see the great metamorphoses almost at once... Don't have any illusions about it. The American people some time in the past just twisted arms of their authorities and forced them to introduce such laws and procedures that guarantied a point of no return for any form of radical dictatorship or totalitarian political control. If the Chinese people will be able to  do the same, they too will be become at least a 'semi-democracy' like the US, which preserves much more freedoms and some kind of political competition and rotation of power, albeit hugely far from ideal. I don't have any doubt as to what kind of posts such figures as Sarkozy or Bush would try to gain, if, suppose, with the help of a time machine they had been transported into the period of the Third Reich in the 1930s. The same goes for Tony Blair. Absolutely no doubts on this one. The same goes for their governments. Don't have any delusions about the nature of the modern governments in the nation-states. There are very substantial differences between legal and cultural models of the contemporary states - YES, but the difference between their governments is almost ZERO, cos the governments are kind of relics in their nature.
There's no such thing as a good government. There's only better controlled governments, worse controlled governments and practically UNCONTROLLED governments - all with the same motives and very similar interests which don't have anything to do with the population's well-being as well as with the ethics or moral. They are intrinsically immoral, and so far there's nothing for it. Take it or leave it. Yes you can say with some degree of certainty that KGB government of Russia does occupy a special place among all others in terms of cruelty and blood-thirst, but it more relates just to the fact of their being KGB, which initially and historically has never been a government as such. But even so, this difference is much less than it could appear at first sight.

A note about the Americans love affair with their guns

This is my short reply to one blogger's question:
Do you think that it's not guns that increase murders, it's nations that are full of people demanding guns?
My answer:
Both are true.
Guns which are practically in an unrestricted circulation nation-wide of course rise the killing rate and not only that - suicide rate too. At the same time Americans have a very high percentage of people who don't value life enough in practice (the conservative historical legacy of the US). But guns in turn help to keep the very cult of guns and teach Americans from the cradle that guns are part of their culture and an integral attribute of their fight with 'bad guys'. America - we must recognize it and the faster the better for the US - is in this sense much more violent and blood thirsty in this respect than Switzerland and many other European countries for that matter. The death penalty is another very singular distinction in the mass mentality of the US from Europe (the idea of killing as a punishment is very live in the US)
But, guns increase murder rate too, and there's no reasonable doubt that the criminal killing rate in the same Switzerland would fall even lower if the free guns circulation was stopped. They were not invented to protect lives, the fire arms were invented to kill.
The very ban, or, at least serious modification of the rules which would give an individual the right to posses a real gun, would not only reduce directly the killing rate, but also would start a major review of the centuries old romantic love affair of America with their guns, would start some sole searching, and, maybe, today's children in the US will grow into some 'less American' and 'more European' adults in this respect:) One must start somewhere first with word then with deed.

Abortions are bad, but anti-abortionists are incomparably worse!

Abortion may be a crime against a human, not humanITY.
Yeah, abortion is a morally dubious thing to my mind, but it's morally wrong too waging a campaign against abortion without talking about due compensation for those women who bear the child without desire to give birth for some or rather reasons (for example if they were the victims of rape).
If somebody want to campaign against abortion let this highly moral talker first tell what guaranties and compensation he is ready to provide for those who don't want a child.
If a mother can freely give the child to some orphanage and get the compensation for the child-bearing.
Second, many many people in politics like to talk about high moral values of refraining from abortion not because they care a piece of s..t about the killed fetus or unborn child but ONLY and ONLY to gain political points and public attention. More often than not those spouting windbags are men, that never ever are themselves ready to do anything to improve the conditions and guaranties for bearing women so that abortion may become less attractive option and abortion rate may come down.
From my experience, those 'anti-abortionists' never care for an actual drop in abortion rate. They never ever in their deeds (nor even in words) offer anything to actually reduce the rate and save those killed fetuses or unborn child. NEVER, because what they really care about is the loud critique of those killers in skirts.
So I don't like abortions and have a mix of pity and reproach for those who for some or other reasons was forced to do them, but whom I HATE is those politically motivated demagogues, who do nothing, and cynically gain political points and public sympathy at the expense of those abortions and their victims. Actually they need abortions so that they could have a better possibility to give their moral speeches from the high pulpits, then get votes and money.

Obama's change

Obama promised change and he'll be judged by his young constituency and by history according to the success in bringing the change. And the first and foremost change that inspired millions of young progressive-thinking Americans in Obama's campaign speeches is the promised CHANGE OF THE SYSTEM - change in the ways of the White House. Change in the ways America works, change in all what the US's become ossified and stagnant. There's no need for change without stagnation, and there's a stagnation - psychological stagnation, and, what is more, a moral stagnation (see http://dr-world.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-extra-about-moral-political-crisis.html).
But even for such a progressive 'modern' man, as Obama, it will be very difficult to change the US, because for this HE MUST OPENLY AND PUBLICLY RECOGNIZE those terrible mistakes and even crimes that the US, while working in its 'old ways' have accumulated for decades of very often unprincipled external policy. You cannot bring a real change without a proper public 'historic repentance'. But the existing system is such that it is very difficult to pull off this act of historic penance and purification.
Obama will be judged by the way he treats Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and how he perceives the very alarm bell of the phenomenon of the leakages. He will be judged by his ability to bring, not restrain the democracy development in the Middle East and his nerve to refrain from the habitual policy of supporting and stabilizing the 'friendly dictatorial regimes' in the Arab World. He will be judged by choice between true democratic values of America and so called 'strategic interests'. He will be judged by his ability to eliminate the neolithic demagogy dogmas like 'democratic capitalism' in the US and stop allowing democracy to be a hostage of 'capitalism' - 'We the people of the United States...', not the Capitalist class, not the Corporations and Banks etc of the United States. He will be judged by his choice between the true DEMOcracy of the American nation and the existing CORPOROcracy distributing the real power of control over the state according to class ladder. He will be judged, accordingly, by his ability to change the education situation in the US and give the same opportunities and incentives in terms of education to poor Americans as have always been at the disposal of the rich and their sons and daughters, and to put through the health reform. He will be judged by his ability to decouple the scientific research from the military orders - demilitarize the science and technology. He'll be judged by his ability to change the size and role of the American army - demilitarize the US.
Other particular items I would very like to see on his agenda:
1) Once and for all openly to put an end to this absolutely obsolete and unjustified type of relationship with Israel - giving it absolute impunity and not letting it to account for its action like any other sovereign country before international community for it's actions. This unconditional friendship policy for the last several decades cost Israeli people, American people and the rest of the world thousands up on thousands of lives (directly and indirectly) and billions upon billions of dollars (in direct and indirect economic losses and expenditures). The human cost is can hardly be estimated.
Yes the US must remain friends with Israel but this relationship must be an adult one
2) He, as a man with the 21th century mentality, must understand that the antiquated privilege of 'absolute state secrecy' must be abolished, and there must new mechanisms in place to control the actions of Government on the external fronts. No absolute secrecy any more! There must always be some commissions from the Congress let in on those secrets and who may or may not give the approval to classify or disclose some or other bit of info. No presumption of trust given to the Government any more, on the contrary: it's Government who must PROVE beyond reasonable doubts that something must be classified. Obama promised in his election campaign to change the ways of the White House. Let him do! Not only the well-being of the most powerful nation-state is at stake and dependent on the renovating the mechanisms of democratic control over the executive power, but also the well-being of the rest of the world and the political achievements of Obama himself. Yes it's difficult to reform a dinosaur but no other way out here. Responsibility of the top leaders of the US must too be reviewed fundamentally. Now for a President of US or Secretary of state or Minister of Defense to get a jail sentence for their feats is something absolutely unheard of, but in the real up-to-date democracy that must change. Any top leader in the US being sworn in must remember that the US prison system exists no only for street gangsters or alimony evaders, and that there's no guarantied criminal impunity for him after he is retired. The mechanism of investigation, the understanding of the responsibility of the statesmen and the mechanisms of checking thereof have to be seriously reformed too.
3) Very smart and long-awaited move what with starting a real relationship with India, but Obama also must take a very hard stance towards China, which continue to subsidize its exports and unfairly gain advantages in trade by using its undemocratic structure. China in essence directly regulates the size of average salary cos they don't have the independent unions or justice system. The also limit the volume of foreign investments. They are not a free market economy, BUT want to use all the advantages of one in its economic dealings with the rest of the world. The US must understand that it (as well as the rest of the democratic free market world) is being f...d by Chinese growth, not helped, cos this growth is achieved in large measure not because of competitive advantages but because of political advantages: a hybrid between slavery and capitalism. Stop giving China new technologies or relatively new technologies in exchange for the relatively primitive consumer products they give in exchange. You give them technology and help develop the economy, they give you the cheap cups and clothes that don't help you develop your economy - that is the point. In the age of colonization European conquerors very often traded indigenous peoples some cheap glass trifles for real gold and diamonds. The same thing is going now between China and the Western world. They give cheap trifles and in return get for example mobile phones and telecommunication technology which completely changes the face and the real possibility of The Chinese economy as well as its political regime. STOP unfair trading with China! And it's not a question of manipulating of currency - it's stupid to accuse China of currency ,manipulation (it's their sovereign right to regulate its currency rate), they manipulate its labor and the foreign investments. It's too their right but they in this case must no be dealt on an equal footing like any other democratic free market economy cos they are not. The West itself willingly allows China to f...k itself. Shame.
4) Oil. Yeeeesss. Of course nobody can believe that Obama is able to resolve this problem completely during his term, BUT he can change the direction of the US policy on this issue for ever. Once and for all the US must declare that it's future economic development is not compatible with oil-based energy sector. As in the case of anti-tobacco campaign with the slogans like 'Smoking leads to cancer and death', any member of the the US society must get the message 'Burning oil leads to economic death', and only from this perceptive should all further judgments about the effectiveness of the US policy on the energy sector be made. US and oil-burning have different ways

Some extra about the moral political crisis in the Western semi-democracies

Why America is always 'bad' when she does anything in international arena? Very simple: because over the second half of the 21th century and the first decade of the 21 the 'moral account balance' of the USA has fallen below zero and all overdraft limits have been exceeded. It didn't happen suddenly, but steadily and surely: as the US continued to trade its VALUES for so called 'strategic interests', say one thing and do another - day by day, year by year, decade by decade the US devalued and discredited its own values, ethical reputation and moral credibility. It was a continuous accumulation of 'sins'. Short answer: TOTAL MORAL BANKRUPTCY brought the US to point of a loss of credibility.
The only thing that can bring a real CHANGE (if Obama still hopes to make a change) is a PUBLIC - in the view of its own people and the whole world - REPENTANCE and recognition of historic wrongs, mistakes and even crimes by the US: there's no other way to restore the reputation and its moral credibility. Cannot move forward, let alone help the world, without historical REPENTANCE!

The same old problem - the so called 'strategic interests' which FAAAR OUTWEIGH all those democratic and human values put together in the decision-making process of the West governments in general, and the US in particular.
They are IMMORAL, unethical, those governments, morally bankrupt. And I don't see any easy way out of this hole into which they has been driving themselves for a very long time. IT IS A HUGE MORAL CRISIS -a historic one. Don't get me wrong I not a moralist in the conservative sense of the word, but the problem is this hefty accumulation of self-contradictions. They are immoral in the sense that all supply of any moral arguments they would like to resort to has finally run dry. The end. There's so much incoherence accumulated that any combination of word and action now arises a whole set of examples of just the opposite in the recent history, which shows incoherence of their moral argument. Decades of continuous demagogy and fraudulent notion substitutes which now one have to pay for.
The only theoretical way-out I see in this situation, is a real REPENTANCE, recognition of the past mistakes and crimes, a very long list of 'the sins' publicly hung out (together with all the former members of the former governments guilty of it:). Turning a new leaf so to speak. With a new state-public covenant and promise. BUT, this is just theory.
Unfortunately, the modern models of governments in the form we know them are STRUCTURALLY incapable of ANYTHING EVER CLOSE TO PUBLIC REPENTANCE for their actions and for the course of action of the former governments. And this in turn implies very far-reaching consequences! This chronic inability to perform 'moral rebooting' costs quite a lot.
In other words, to make the consequences much more clear and understandable - just an example: President Obama would have much more options on his hands in terms of Libya and other countries for that matter, if he could just state, that the US had done a lot of immoral staff before and now and onwards was no longer to do such and such kind of sh... BUT in today's model of state governments he JUST CANNOT do it, EVEN if he personally wants and is etching to do so. That is the point. Democracy needs moral argument, and moral argument needs PRINCIPLES, and principles once broken cannot be restored without an open review, reflection and repentance
He - president - bears all the load of 'spent nuclear fuel' which is done in a month but decays for TENS OF YEARS.
The problem is that when another bad guy comes to power he neither needs nor wishes to explain too much why his rotten policy is not in full accord with what had been declared and established morally before. On the other hand, when a 'good guy' comes to power IT IS A PROBLEM for him to explain why his actions are contrary to the precedents established by the former bad guy, because moral argument and action requires coherence (unlike immoral one). That is where the imbalance comes in. And that is where the 'semi-democracy' comes into play and takes its toll on the semi-democratic countries.
If one comes to think of it, it is an irony, because the great Franco Roosevelt reportedly once said, that 'monarchy is good when there is a good monarch'. By that he meant that, even though good monarchs happen to be in power at times, they don't outweigh the bad or, just stupid ones in terms of their contribution. One bad monarch can leave a foul trace in history, which cannot be repaired after him by a dozen of the good ones.
And, surpise surprise, now this equation works quite well with the governments headed by PMs and presidents. DESPITE the fact, that they come and go through the election democratic process. Because the modern Western countries are 'semi-democracies' - democratish countries in terms of the real control by peoples over their respective governments. And nowhere else can it be truer and more quintessential than on the external policy front, where next to total isolation of the people from the information about what their governments are up to and next to total absence of the leverage of direct control over their actions have led finally to such 'short circuits' as Wikileaks publishing the secret documents about the US 'great exploits' in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Correction: Julian Assange has been motivated by lack of choice

One very important point to clarify: contrary to what many people believe or want to believe, Bradly Manning and Julian Assange and his supporters in Wikileaks decided to publish all the US diplomatic materials about war in Iraq and Afghanistan NOT because his stance is radically anarchistic or because he want to overturn all governments at once, but because he didn't see any other choice within the existing very obsolete and next to absolutely ineffective system of democratic control over what governments are up to on the international arena. That is the problem. Wikileaks 'bomb' is not a product of some super-radical beliefs, but a mere symptom, a sublimation of the objective force of people's desire to know and control what their 'big brother' does after there has been accumulated an unprecedented corpus of evidence that what the governments do internationally is more often than not goes DEAD AGAINST the interests and lives of their citizens. Wikileaks has just played the role of a safety valve, the last circle of defense. IF the government of the US had started before a comprehensive and deep reform of the control mechanisms, it's quite possible there would never have been such dramatic revelations and leakages. Just there comes a time where there's no choice left, because governments of so called democratic countries just legalize the secrecy of any of their action and the secrecy and unaccountability for their actions. They grant themselves virtually with total immunity, which means in practice impunity.
Democracy MUST BE DEMOCRATIC, not democratish like in the US!! And that means not parliaments, not elections once per 4 years, not some media that may criticize something, not changes of government from time to time once per 4 years, but it means REAL AND EFFECTIVE TOOLS AND MECHANISMS OF CONTROL BY THE CITIZENS OVER THEIR GOVERNMENTS ON ANY FRONT ranging from any negotiation and any candy bought from or sold to another country, and to the last piece of paper the government officials use to wipe themselves!
Wikileaks in this sense is an NATURAL phenomenon. It is not the Wikileaks project that became a major problem for some Western governments, but it is a huge pile of problems accumulated and publicly realized during decades that have lead to Wikileaks 'disruption' in the end in the atmosphere of total reluctance on the part of governments to leave at last the 20th century and move into the 21th.

Why do people want to become soldiers and kill?

'Why do people want to become soldiers and kill?' - this was one of the question I had to answer in one of the public 'ask a question' projects. I see quite fit to double my answer in the blog.

They do it first of all because in their 20s (at their young age) they are still very poorly educated about the history of their country, of the whole world, about politics and about human life in general. Politicians (who are educated very well) actively exploit this circumstance, and paint a good attractive 'heroic' picture for those fledglings, alluring them into the army, promising a worthy cause for their life and all that.
Mind you, they themselves (politicians) don't go to the war oh no, and not because they are too old too weak, but because they value their lives, only the young children of the nation who don't have enough education to fully understand the value of life (their own and life in general) - they are directed by their 'parents' in power to fight wars.
But it's not all about this simple mechanics. After you have served several years in active war zone and killed some 'enemy', even despite all those horrors of war, psychologically it gets much harder for you just to confess to yourself that you made a mistake and walked into a trap set by your own government. It's very hard for a man (especially young one) to recognize that he killed several people 'just for nothing', that he killed people incorrectly, because it's a huge psychological pressure for one to recognize that he, though by mistake and by fault of the government, voluntarily killed people in other part of the world. Very few people are capable of acknowledging this hard truth to themselves and quite army and begin a real war for peace. More often than not governments are successful in setting the guys and girls on the 'crooked path' cause most of them after serving and killing have only one easy way-out: to convince themselves that those killings were right, that they served the right cause and helped their country etc, and, as a result, stay further in army and continue to kill.
In this sense governments apply a very old but effective technology of converting children into inveterate and irreparable killers and feeding them into the mincer of war, latter those guys and girls (who could have become good doctors lawyers, rights activists etc etc) return into the civil life and themselves become active 'carriers of mental infection' convincing others about the bliss of being a soldier and helping the government to get new 'meet' for its war games. The main trick is to force or con an uneducated young man into doing something so bad, that latter he would not have the psychological power to recognize it. So the main thing for a soldier is to learn to feel that he is always right, and that morality of his actions is regulated solely by his government (or commander). If the Counsel responsible for the Nobel Prize really wants to meet the declared conditions and aims of the Award, it must establish a special Nobel Prize Squared for the people like Bradly Manning or Julian Assange, because, de-facto, so far nobody's come even close to the record of war-mongering and mass murder as national governments, and those, who at the expense of their entire life, like the young Bradly, in good conscience tell the whole world about the true deeds, intentions and face of the governments, are the bravest and the most selfless and sacrificing heroes, let alone the most effective one in the way of actual advance of piece on our poor raped Planet.

See also:

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CVRWNP6MUFXGNDQJ…

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CVRWNP6MUFXGNDQJ…

Bahrain, Yemen: just another litmus test to reveal the ethical crisis in the US foreign policy

Situation in Bahrain and Yemen is just another excellent litmus of the US loyalty to its own declared principles and values of Democracy, of its choice between true values and so called 'interests' - a buzzword (belonging to the second-class demagogic vocabulary of the 20th century) that has lately begun producing a nauseating feeling in many educated people at the mere mention of it.
While America and the rest of the West are procrastinating over the nauseating red-herring of 'no-fly zone', only to do absolutely nothing of the pile of things they could and should have done many weeks ago to help the people of Libya, the situation around Bahrain government trying to kill and violently suppress its own people has reached an unprecedented scale and degree of cynicism. Authorities asked and let in a huge corpus of military force from a foreign country to help them to shoot and cripple their own people!! Unbelievable indeed! One country not only kills and beats its own people, but help another government to help with some extra butchers in order to more successfully and reliably dispose of the demonstrators! That's 21th century indeed! In Yemen protesters are killed by their dozens by the government's force in the form of special services and military. They open fire on their civilians in Yemen without any qualms and scruples. But Yemen too, to great disappointment and horror of Yemeni people, is a country of 'the special strategic interest' to the US!
And what could we hear from the US on this score? Just: 'Please, show respect to your citizens'. Respect indeed... 'Tut-tut', - said the US to Bahrain bloody butchers, wagging its finger.. Even Caddafi, whom the US exhorted to leave and accused of criminal actions against his own people several days ago, was not as directly unprincipled and defiant a butcher as to ask OFFICIALLY a FOREIGN COUNTRY to help him to kill its people to retain their freedom in his fist. I wonder: what would the US say if Cuba, whose 11 m people (not leadership by any means) have been tortured by the US sanctions for decades, had openly and officially invited foreign troops to help to beat and kill people and defend the regime? But of course, let's not forget, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (the latter is the biggest financier of terrorist activity against the US itself) are.. of course 'strategic interests'! All in all, those absolutely terrifying and unlimited in their cynical cruelty events in Bahrain have been just PASSED OVER by the West in general and by the US in particular. They have been passed over regardless of the fact that they have evolved in full view of the amused public 'in broad daylight' for several weeks on end now, and came to something that would constitute a new personal record even for such a miraculously anti-human maniac as colonel Caddafi.
Just another of the recent glaring examples of the huge, unbridgeable and unconcealed chasm between the American values and the American interests, the American words and the Americans deeds, the American external political declarations and intentions. Does the US fight socialism (or protect capitalism) or does it defend democracy? Does it fight religious extremism or does it defend its oil interests? Does it fight against real criminals guilty of genocide against their own people, or does it protect 'special interests' and special rights of special countries like Israel? Does the US government political establishment fight to protect their own interests and interests of some other special countries at the expense of the American people or does it fight to defend the real interests of the nation? Does the US fight to provide a good pension, dividends and cloudless future for some bloody adventurists like Chaney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld etc, or does it fight to insure that those conscientious people of the young generation get more hope and less disappointment and that there is less need of such selfless desperate figures like Bradly Manning in order to tear the fiendish veil behind which the US Government with 120% guarantee can hide any true motives and crimes against the true interests of the American people as well as other nations without a single mechanism of democratic control on this front.
Just one more blow to already totally destroyed moral reputation. The continuing megacrisis of zero ethical credibility of the US in its foreign policy has just reached a point where there is no avoiding big decision and real changes (promised by Obama, but unfulfilled so far because of huge accumulation of a huge amount of 'historical junk of unprincipled and morally irresponsible actions'). This is just an additional note to what's been said earlier:
http://dr-world.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-must-decide-whether-to-support-its.html
http://dr-world.blogspot.com/2011/03/america-refused-to-teach-arabs.html
http://dr-world.blogspot.com/2011/03/west-re-lybia-seems-intentionally-slow.html

America refused to teach Arabs democracy, then Arabs will teach the US democracy!

During all the second half of the 20th century not only did America support the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East but actually nourished them, financed them and protected them, because, so called 'national interests' (special label under which governments tend to guise governmental and political interests) as ever topped the values and principles, despite the fact that there's no 'special interests' in the American constitution and those ethical values and philosophical visions that had been established by the Fathers-founders of the country and of the nation. To put it simply the US has been absolutely unscrupulous and unprincipled in its opportunistic and often extremely cynical foreign policies and has shitted on its own declared moral principles and values like no one else - those moral principles, which are really extra precious and universal, which, without being taken hostage, really could become 'the weapon of mass instruction' if the US had been firm in following them. All of these bitter truths are no secrete: they have been many times recognized in full and openly at the highest political level, e.g. by Secretary Rice (http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2008/September/20080918155132eaifas0.4152033.html) and others.
Yes, over the Cold War era it was much easier to mask political and governmental interests and unscrupulousness, substituting and passing them off for 'national interests' - this art and mastery of the fraudulent substitution the US adopted from Russia in less then no time. The paradigm 'ends justify means' became an integral part of everything done by the US, though historically and culturally it had never been inherent in the nation's politics before. But what's even worse in this situation is that: AFTER the Cold War had ended the US didn't bother to change anything in this sense. Just business as usual.
The direct and understandable result of this has been such a huge, truly ASTRONOMICAL loss of any moral authority of the US and all that that country is preaching - especially after the Iraq war and open support of Caddafi regime in 2000s - that even after the coming to power of such a humanist and intellectual as Obama, the real capacity of America to do something good in terms of protecting democratic values and human rights (on the rare occasions when it really became necessary) turns out to be close to ZERO! America do need to restore at least partially the 'store of credit' that it used to command far in the past, but never will the US be able to do so before open, honest and whole-hearted recognition, if not contrition, of its own betrayal of its own values. The US needs some serious sole-searching, self-reflection, contrition and renouncement once and for all of the methods and demagogic techniques it largely used in the past.
There are natural processes and natural aspirations to democracy in the world, and if the US continues to work against them for the sake of.. 'special interests', then, in the end it will be America, not those countries, who falls behind. America does need to solve this arguably the biggest moral and ethical crisis - accumulated crises - in its entire history!
If America refuses to help Arabs to win democracy, than Arabs will teach Americans about democracy and the real responsibility of the government and political elites.
If the American government doesn't develop democracy in controlling its own action beyond the borders of the country, than Bradly Manning and Julian Assange (and many many other 'usual people' who happens to be 1000 times more honest and conscientious than the so called elites) will develop it in their own good way without being given any choice from above. But the second way - to wait until someone else teach the US about its own democratic values - will be the most painful, stupid and humiliating. Is there any point in just waiting till the eggs teach the hen? Isn't the time ripe for the US for a big review of foreign policy ethics and straightening-out?

The US must decide whether to support it's "interests" or its "values"

Spokesman of the State Dept retired, because he convicted Pentagon of stupidity and lack of humanity in treating Bradly Manning - Wikileaks Man. Because this spokesman was guided by his conscience and real moral principles: that's the Darwinism of the US: honest people retire or fired, Hilarie Clinton and Rumsfeld, Volfovits or Chaney stay and get promotion! That's the main ethical and in the end therefore political crisis. Bush and Chaney after having added thousands of killed American boys and girls in uniform to the 'trophy bag' of terrorists, are on good State pension and have dividends from their companies from exclusive activities in Iraq, and people like Bradly, who in good conscience reveals truth to the American people and the rest of the World about their governments, trying to prevent in future such absurdly senseless, illegitimate and freak wars, is tortured in solitary confinement. That's the moral equation of the American politics. That's the gist of the deepest crisis ever. Obama confronts the unavoidable choice: who and what is right and good and and who and what is wrong and bad. There is a very clear distinction crystallized between so called 'external interests' of the US Government and its structures, and NATIONAL interests, that is the interests of the American people. Never ever in the whole history of the US have those two notions been further from each other and more mutually exclusive. Political America must decide who reflects her real values and interests - interests of her people - villains like Chaney or Rumsfeld or Volfovits, or people like Bradly and that spokesman. The so called 'state secrets' and 'external state interests' fundamentally DON"T REFLECT any interests of the American people - that's the essence of the moral crisis.
Problem around Libya, which has been supported and rehabilitated by the US and the whole of the West in the recent past, is just one more manifestation - a fault line - of the very same HUGE moral crisis. "Interests" were prioritized as ever over and in conflict with the declared values. Now it's come a moment when it is no longer possible to reconcile those two, and continue assert that black is white and white is black. American political establishment must make a revolution inside itself and recognize its immoral approaches of the past and crimes. Only then the US could again, with time, gain any reputation as a protector of any special values. The US, as it is, has just turned its own declared moral values into 'a slave-girl' into a 'surf-prostitute' which is used as need arises, like a plug for any whole in so called 'INTERESTS'. I don't know about any interests in the Constitution of the US. Unprecedented moral degradation and degeneration of the morality and ethics of the US policy, especially the foreign one!

The West re Lybia seems intentionally slow and utterly hypocritical!

Everything done by the West at present seems intentionally as slow and as practically ineffective as possible - just saving the face and making a show.
The help should have been provided immediately. Now the US are trying to allude to Iraqi experience - good one. But no one's asking the US to do a direct military invasion. The first things to help are obviously these and some others: 1) absolute blockade of any potential weaponry and mercenary supplies to Tripoli by sea (should have been done weeks ago) 2) facilitation of and, if need be, help with the supply of foods and basic goods to the won territories 3) necessary financial help 4) CONSULTING HELP (!!) for rebels - advise by a bunch of specialist in the fields such as effective administrative maintaining of the captured territory, logistics, effective creation of the chain of command, creation of power leadership, the right way of winning hearts and minds and retaining civil population on their side, sharing some of intelligence information about Cadafi moves etc etc. First thing the rebels need is not direct military invasion as in Iraq, but BRAIN HELP AND EXPERTISE - that's what they need from the West apart from words of formal support. Also some special non-military equipment. And anybody understands, that the West could have really helped very much to Libyan people without any military intervention - very many things that could have and should have been done long ago, but that have not been done. One more evidence for me of an unbelievably cynical position and pretense of the West, especially the US, in its relationship with cruel dictatorial regimes. Everyone knew more than 40 years who Cadafi was - no secret. But just at the same time as a court trial was going on of Sadam Husein, Muamar Cadafi was increasingly saluted and accepted by the West. No only the West has been ever more involved in trading and business investment in Lybia, but, what is the most important for me, the West started shook hands, GIVE HUGS to Cadafi, invite this 'cannibalistic' Cadafi to some special festive events as a guest of honor. No substantial difference between Cadafi and Hussein - no secret! Only one phrase is in my head when I observe the way the West and the US in particular are treating various regimes: unprincipled SELF-INTEREST and HYPOCRISY! Shame!
If nothing is changed, there will soon come a time when not a single word from the West is taken seriously by anybody in moral aspect after this unending string of hypocritical lies and utter commercialization of the most profound values and principles on which the very US and other Western countries were built in the past. Shame!

Is nationalism really worth anything real?

What is the nature of nationalism? What's objective and what is subjective part of it?
Very deep, old, and so far under-resolved question continuing to occupy the minds of intellectuals and scientific world. There is a heck of a lot of books and theories made on this theme.

In my humble opinion, It's a sort of religion, psychological phenomenon, the end result of which is a mass identity replacement. Many people do have a 'damaged identity' and the morbid anxieties related thereto. But when those people unify themselves under the flag of some similarities (even if those similarities are completely ephemeral) they feel some kind of relief of the pain, created by the identity vacuum. It like a club of people who were born on Monday and who pride themselves on this fact, ascribing to Monday some 'special' even mystical (religious) qualities.
The anger and potential war (in broad sense: war of words, war of trade, military war in extreme cases) with those belonging to 'other world' is one more way to vent the identity deficit anxiety. As with all self-fulfilling forecasts, the state of war with 'bad others' allegedly threatening their special national belonging, is, in the eyes of nationalists, one more evidence that they are really 'special and different', and, hence, do have a fairly firm identity. All of this doesn't mean, that the degree and activity of nationalism cannot be controlled or 'activated'. There are more and less acute forms, and even 'sleeping nationalism'
Historically, nationalism began really strong and really felt only from the end of 18th - beginning of 19th century. Then the Governments got the real power over their nation-states and learned how to exploit and even create this identity-crisis. Nationalism became a weapon of mass destruction, a perfect masterpiece of demagogy - super-duper socio-psychological medication, allowing Governments to hold power and to gain those ends, which before they could have gained only with the help of the direct force against their own peoples.
So nationalism in the shape we know it now was to a large degree an invention, a lever developed, improved and 'polished' by the political power after the nation states were created and the means of controlled mass communication and broadcasting were developed. So now we more often than not deal with an artificially induced 'boosted' nationalism (in overdrive mode), 'genetically modified nationalism'.
But the fundamental causes of it lie in the identity crisis and the venting of the relevant anxieties and psychological pain.
Do I believe in the reality of such a notion as a cultural nations? Emphatically NOW - in my judgment not only is it a myth but also a very dangerous one. I don't believe in nationality of culture or in 'national cultures', but, on balance, I do belief in cultured nations! Political nations which are for some or other reasons are less or more culturally advanced and capable of further progress - reasons having nothing at all to do with nationality as such. I also believe in cultural barriers the true causes of which having nothing to do with nationality too, as well as in the universal possibility of overcoming those barriers and making initially immiscible and critically antagonistic cultures compatible and able to be parts of one common and larger culture (diverse but not self-contradictory in itself, with a common universal ethical and aesthetic foundation)

Spike in oil price will batter China much more than Western economies

The latest revolutionary events in the Middle East in general and in Libya in particular have already lead to a sharp rise in oil price, raising the bar above the key level of $100 per bbl just in a matter of days. But many analysts are now warning about a further increase which could bring the whole situation to a third oil shock in the event things take a turn for the worse. Some of experts are already anticipating a new astronomical target of $220 per bbl.
In my judgment even so sharp a spike in oil prices in the near future would hit China and some other industrializing economies by far the worst. Of course, $220 per bbl would be no birthday gift for Western developed economies, but it would be an 'apocalypse now' either - nothing even mildly comparable with the oil crisis 1973.
Pundits in their gloomy forecasts are pointing to 1) extra inflationary pressure associated with the corresponding oil price jump and 2) the fragile post crises period of recovery in the West which still continues down a bumpy road, slowly and painfully making its way through a jobless phase. They are also pointing out the fact that Western governments up to now have spent all their special stimulus packages, so there is little one can do in terms of extra emergency measures.
But, I don't think it's all doom and gloom. In the US inflation is still very low due to still low demand - structurally low demand. While a sharp increase in oil prices will draw discontent of the American consumer and rise the costs of the American producer and trader, the overall consumer price hike will be much less than many would expect. The problems of Western economies are structural in character including the tenacious joblessness and sluggish demand. On the other hand productivity continues to rise despite already very high oil prices and rather sharp dynamics of their growth in the recent past in the recent past. Oil does seem to take a very small part of the added value created in the wealthy economies of the West now.
On the other hand every cloud has a silver lining: in case of a major oil price spike, the positive processes of transition to a greener, less oil-dependent economy due to investment in new technology in the West will gain extra momentum and urgency. The world is close to the energy revolution as it is, and any lack of urgency and political will here is going to be eliminated by another oil crisis. Additional redistribution of cash flow into the alternative energy sources industry would come in handy indeed in case of oil crisis.

On the other hand China have already started testing long term sustainability of its industrialization model. Before the Middle East events inflation in China had already reached rather dangerous levels and continue to rise. The part of oil and other raw materials expenses in the creation of the Chinese GDP is already huge and the pain threshold is not so very far. I am sure, that the biggest danger that potential 'oil shock' presents to China, whose export dependent, heavily subsidized and energy extremely ineffective economy would be dealt a hefty blow and lose much of its competitiveness. Consumer demand in China also depends incomparably more on the price oil and other raw materials than that of Western economies.
For China an oil shock would be a real test and a real shock. How China will be able to handle it remains to be seen.
And last but not least, quite contrary to what many sages like to foretell, I am sure, that an economic crisis in China would do much more good than harm for the global economy in general and for the Western economies in particular in that it would make the long awaited and much talked-about 'rebalancing' of trade, monetary and investment unbalances, much closer and realer. Contrary to what is thought by many experts I am sure, that at this point quasi-market China does more damage than good to the developed economies and to the whole global economy in general, in effect parasitically "stealing" from other really market economies growth (including her closest neighbors).
Having said that, I still think that the current jump in oil price is more a reflection of speculators' grip on commodities market and their wish to bull and capitalize on the moment, than of real fundamental problems of an inadequate supply.

The West should have reacted much earlier and stronger to Lybia events

The Western community MUST do more, not just express their 'concern' or 'amaze', or to say, like Obama did, how 'indecent' it is to kill civil population on mass (such a naughty boy this Cadafi). Freeze freeze freeze any assets of the regime bloody kleptocrats and at least in the strongest terms possible give give and give moral promises all the democratic forces who at the expense of their lives now try to dethrone the bloody usurpers. They must be sure that the West will help them at least after the overturn of the regime in terms of establishing new and fundamentally better relationship. Moral support from the outside world is now the most important thing, because it gives an additional amount of confidence to the liberators. The West at the first signs of violence should have taken the hardest position possible and express its attitude and support for democratic forces in Libya (...as well as in other Middle East countries for that matter) in the strongest terms possible, and it's shame that Obama pronounced any words only a weak after the start of the events.
All in all the West in general and the US in particular have demonstrated rather lukewarm support and taken a unacceptably soft and formal position. Nothing surprising, however, if one remembers that the US to the this day for the sake of Israel and themselves have not only tolerated but actually supported a whole bunch of dictators in the Middle East - the way things continued to stand even when any objective necessity for such support expired. As ever the West put its political interests and dubious friendship far above the much touted fundamental values of democracy - so much so that it actually put a break on the natural democratization processes in the Middle East (e.d. there are reasonable grounds to suspect that democracy in the Middle East would have advanced much further up to date but for the actual policy of the US in this region). One more landmark in the continued process of ideological discrediting of the West in the recent history. One more piece of evidence for developing countries to suspect that in reality democracies are not interested in promoting democracy in the rest of the world at all... Is it not time for the Western Powers at last to learn their lessons?! Hey, there's no Cold War any more and it's all long over with all the excuses belonging to it. The systematic continuous loss of principles and credibility of the West (in exchange of oil or gas or benefits of trade and corporate business) has already did a hardly estimable damage to the democratic countries.

A couple of words about the US wars in Vietnam and Korea

Unfortunately there are still many Americans who prefer talking about Vietnam war in terms of counter-factual history and in terms of 'ifs and woulds' - 'if we won then this and that then we would...'. Korean war still continues to be used as a kind of positive example and justification of other things, which otherwise look ugly, feel ugly, sound ugly... because they are ugly.
Among the recent typical questions on this topic I tried to reply to was the following: 'If we had won the Vietnam war, do you think Vietnam would be like South Korea? In other words...very developed, technologically advanced, awesome, etc? Such a shame the North was so brainwashed, and such a shame we were so afraid of communism'
Here I considered it my duty to publish my answer to this and many other similar questions (or conditional assumptions):
In other words, would there be two Vietnams, one of which would live more or less well and free, and in another one people would die in their millions like in North Korea because of starvation and state repressions and whose militarism - like that of North Korea - latter would strike terror into all other countries and peoples in the region sapping their resources up to this day? Interesting question.
I would say no, because Vietnamese type of civil was unlike Korean to my mind is not winnable in full. Korean war was a political war organized "from top" and controlled from center by 'official' political forces. In this respect it was not truly 'civil', rather too governments tried to carve up the country and nation for a number of reasons. But in case of Vietnam, at some stage the war became truly civil in the sense that it was organized 'from bottom', external American forces and their presence became absolutely illegitimate in the eyes of a critically huge proportion of population, and the practical methods the US allowed itself to use only too well served the purpose shifting the war irreversibly from ideological plane (in which it was wrongly represented in the American media) into nationalistic plane - one nation invades another and in reality fights with its people. The war was unwinnable in ideological and political sense.
Even if one assumes that some kind of purely military 'magic' success could allow the US to recapture the whole territory and even formally hand over a sort of political control to some kind of Vietnamese government, the war wouldn't have stopped and this political control would have existed more on paper than in reality. The war would have gone to a kind of smoldering phase, and returned in its full bloody strength to a full fledged state just as American military presence had been wound down.
There's no if, cos this war at a very early stage was lost both ideologically and politically. Power is not everything.
About South Korea: in place of many Americans I wouldn't be too much proud of this achievement. While fully recognizing the well-being of S Korea, it is worth remembering that the relative success of this half of the nation has been built on the bones and flesh of millions upon millions upon millions of killed people of the other half of the nation. The problem is still there, and now the whole region is a victim of Korean military and nuclear blackmail. America is also negatively affected. Communist totalitarian regimes could be veeery different in terms of their detrimental effect. Cuba is one thing, and North Korea absolutely another story. But it was the war and the division of the nation that would have predetermined North Korean regime as being in future the bloodiest and most dangerous on earth as well as most isolated and stable among all others much softer communist autocracies. Also let's not forget those millions of lives that were claimed by the Korean war, supported actively on the Western side by the US. The memory of this played and continues to play in the hand of Korean regime.
I know Americans like to claim rewards for their Korean involvement but at the same time they are not that much willing to recognize their responsibility for another 'gift' they at least partially were involved in making to the Korean people and the rest of the world - North Korea.
This again raises the question about the methods and successes of the US in the Cold War, which, to be frank, in reality was not so much about communism against capitalism, as about Russian militaristic and political aggression and 'influence' (in the guise of communism). Unfortunately it was Russia who partially taught America her ugly methods and her intrinsic cruel cynicism - not the other way around. Russia remained what she has always been - the land of terror, but the US became much more 'Russian' in its ways, habits and judgments, and this is, I think, a true shame. Shame for a great nation which before the end of World War II historically had been a very wise and pacifist nation, none the weaker for its pacifism. A nation which could produce such intellectual and political giants like Franco Delano Roosevelt, a nation that because of the Cold War mentality - ends justify the means - was in the end intellectually reduced to such a condition, that would become possible to elect people like Bush and Chaney. That's a shame, and this is a mental legacy of all those wars in the past. I could only imagine what would the late Roosevelt, or other American intellectual politicians of the past for that matter have said about all these Cold War mental transformations of the US. That's a shame. Trade blockade of the minuscule and non-dangerous nation of Cuba - that's a shame! And the last two wars, which are direct result of 'Cold War mental national degradation' - that's a shame. When a former intellectual giant behaves like a petty militaristic dwarf - that's a shame!
Let there be no mistake and misunderstanding, I believe in America and I am sure that the new generations of American people and politicians are already starting to 'recover' this great nation back on the normal trajectory - pacifist intellectuals of the 21th century like Obama. But it is precisely my worries and my wish of good to this country that forces me to criticize and deplore its inordinate mistakes and some times criminal mistakes of the second part of the 20th century and the first decade of  the new one. Of course the context of the Cold War helps us to understand many of those mistakes, but not justify.
I am myself Canadian but I love the US and what is more I believe in its good-protecting and good-creating potential, but the US will not be able to move forward into the 21th century if American people won't learn to recognize the national mistakes. And it's difficult, very difficult to recognize national historical mistakes bordering on crimes against your own and other peoples. It's very difficult to recognize that the state sent to death tens of thousands of American girls and boys to death under the grandiose and blissful slogans of help to the nations that would actually have been ravaged or even split as a result of those messianic lies. Moreover, all of what I say here, now is increasingly recognized by American top politicians themselves. Let's deal with the history honestly, draw the lessons, get wise again, and start moving mentally and culturally into the new century, into the century of peace and Enlightenment, not of war and cheap militaristic Messianic. Into the age of Christian values according to Christ and not according to Bush, Islamic values according to Muhammad and not according to Bin Laden, etc. Let's grow up, cos the mental and political health of America is a critical condition for the piece in the whole world.

About nationalism

What is nationalism? What is the nature of nationalism? What's objective and what is subjective part of it?
Very deep, old, and so far under-resolved question continuing to occupy the minds of intellectuals and scientific world. There is a heck of a lot of books and theories made on this theme.

In my humble opinion, It's a sort of religion, psychological phenomenon, the end result of which is a mass identity replacement. Many people do have a 'damaged identity' and the morbid anxieties related thereto. But when those people unify themselves under the flag of some similarities (even if those similarities are completely ephemeral or trivial) they feel some kind of relief of the pain, created before by the identity vacuum. It is like a club of people who were born on Monday and who pride themselves on this fact, ascribing to Monday some 'special' even mystical (religious) qualities.
The anger and potential war (in broad sense: war of words, war of trade, military war in extreme cases) with those belonging to 'other world' is one more major way of venting the identity deficit anxiety. As with all self-fulfilling forecasts, the state of war with 'bad others' allegedly threatening their special national belonging, is, in the eyes of nationalists, one more evidence that they are really 'special and different', and, hence, do have a fairly firm identity.
All of this doesn't mean, that the degree and activity of nationalism cannot be controlled or 'activated'. There are more and less acute forms, and even, what could be called 'sleeping  or latent nationalism'
Historically, nationalism began really strong and really felt in earnest only from the end of 18th - beginning of 19th century. Then the Governments got the real power over their nation-states and learned how to exploit and even create this identity-crisis. The very term 'nation-state' was invented by European politicians as demagogic conception  (let many pundits disagree with me on this one) to legitimize their political power sharing and power holding over multitudes of people. Nationalism became an ideological weapon of mass destruction, a perfect masterpiece of demagogy - super-duper socio-psychological medication, allowing Governments to hold power and to gain those ends, which before they could have gained only with the help of the direct force against their own peoples. Of course that's not to say that they (politicians in power) themselves did not get sucked in the self-induced ideological whirlpool of nationalism: of course it was flattering and pleasant for their ego to 'realize' that they were kind of heroes and good helpers who were 'kindly asked' by their respective 'nations' to rule over them, as if those nation were single subjects with a single will. Of course this self-reflection was 'just what the doctor ordered' for those powerful people in authority - such conception would help even the most hard-headed politicians, sending thousands upon thousands of people to war and death, to sleep tight and well (though even before those ruling elites had not suffered too much from a bad sleep). Needless to say, this concept of state-nation was 'nationally relativistic' and politically conveniently split the moral (what is bad in general could be good if France or Germany needs it; what is bad for England and her people could be good and ethically justified for Russia etc - regional fragmented moral, that serves not the universal ideals of the Enlightenment, but 'nations' and in practice the political elites of those 'nations')
So nationalism in the shape we know it now was to a large degree an invention, a lever developed, improved and 'polished' by the political power after the so called nation-states were created and the means of controlled mass communication and broadcasting were developed. So now we more often than not deal with an artificially induced 'boosted' nationalism (in overdrive mode), 'genetically modified nationalism'.
But the fundamental causes of it lie in the identity crisis and the venting of the relevant anxieties and psychological pain.

A few words about the EU: good idea, but in reality a big fraud

Long ago. Looong ago it already started look like a very bad, and, to be honest, politically and economically unsustainable idea. But for the general public it began to be increasingly evident 1) politically when the so called Constitution (later to be replaced with Lisbon treaty) was failed several times 2) economically when the specter of communism in its modernized guise again started haunting Europe: Germany and some other countries produced and paid, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland etc just borrowed and consumed.
The problem is that EU, in the form it is now, is a kind of Union of European governments, not of European Nations, and it's not controlled by peoples, that's a sad reality that goes fundamentally against the political tradition and self-consciousness of the nations 'misunited' under the EU flag. In practice it is a purely bureaucratic structure, and maybe it would be OK IF it would not be sold at the same time as a kind of 'true product' of the total unification of peoples, which could be possible only and only under the condition of true democratic control. It is just a club of the governments that use this machinery rather often to avoid control on the part of their respective nations. So not only is this 'Federation' undemocratic, but also it makes less democratic in practice those nations included in this sweet project.
Economical problems partly emanate from the political ones, cos you cannot make a unified currency zone (eurozone) without making a unified fiscal zone. But the latter, obviously cannot be done without a serious 'blurring' of the sovereignty of the participating states, that's, without some kind of tectonic political merger with the formation of some kind of united states of Europe. From the very first it was obvious for many many critics that you cannot essentially deprive countries of their right to print its own currency, giving them instead the right to borrow without restriction the new common currency, but at the same time allow them to control their budget totally on their own. You don't have to be Einstein to understand that every Government in those poor countries will just borrow as much money as it wants just to stay in power its 4 or 8 years, shifting the burden to the next people.
Change the EU in a better way and then it might be worth for other nations to be part of it