A slow stream

All reports about this seem to come from the same source, so one should not necessarily believe it, but it is kind of important, so let's just assume that it is true.

The Gulf Stream stopped.

It did not stop for ever. It is not all over. It is not a case of imminent winter and huge glaciers for all of Northern Europe.

However, it did stop for ten full days. And that is worrying enough. It does not make you think, because you do not know what to make of it, but it does make you worry.

You know all you need to know

If you think you can trust that your local newspaper or television station keeps you up to date with the major events in the world, ask yourself if it reported on the expulsion of 150,000 Arabs from Niger with a notice of a few days.

One hundred and fifty thousand is the equivalent of a fairly big town. Imagine that everyone in your block and all the surrounding blocks, until you reach 150,000 persons, were asked to leave the country you live in within a few days. Would you think that was of no concern to the rest of the world?

The expulsion started 26 October, but the decision has since been withdrawn, and you can now forget about it. However, if your local news source did not mention this case of ethnic cleansing, when it was announced, don't forget that it sometimes leaves news out.

Tale of Two Numbers

Currently 2,782 Americans have died in the war in Iraq (العراق). That is a very high number. Imagine that you go to work by bus every day. Imagine that the bus is full in both directions. Then imagine that every bus during one month falls down an abyss and everyone in that bus dies - both in the morning and the evening. Then you get roughly the number of American deaths in Iraq.

And yet, this was not a war in America. How many Iraqis have died? According to research referenced to by The Economist, the number probably is around 650,000 and it may be close to one million. This is excess deaths, the number of persons who died due to the war, and who probably would not have died, if Saddam Hussein (صدام حسي) had stayed in power.

That means around 4% of the Iraqi population has died. And about 0.001% of the American population has died.

If you ever wonder why some Iraqis are not grateful for having been liberated by America, consider those numbers.

Unless you know what they want, you cannot give it

The UN exercises "pressure" on North Korea. Well, it may be no pressure at all. Unless you know what the North Korean decision takers really want and what they really want to avoid, it is impossible to exercise any pressure.

And it seems no one knows what the North Korean decision takers want.

It is not enough to be right

The French parliament has adopted a law which makes it illegal to deny the Turkish genocide of Armenians 1915-1917. It is a law against the freedom of speech, but even if one in general loves laws against the freedom of speech, this is not one of the ones to love. This is a law about something that happened in Turkey 90 years ago. The genocide did occur, but a lot of Turks have decided not to believe it - mostly out of national pride, one would assume. And a law against the belief of the majority of another country's government and parliament is rarely a wise move.

And what good comes?

It is easy to attack the American activity in Iraq based on news reports:

* suicide bombers
* 25 local policemen killed or so injured that they have to be removed each day
* lack of respect from the American side for the huge number of dead Iraqi, while the count of American lost lives is cautiously observed
* increased extremist activities in Iraq and in the rest of the world
and so on...

However, surely there are some positive things that come out of it as well. Where are the reports of new Iraqi roads built for American money, improved telecommunications, huge campaigns of cultural activities all over the country, increased access to high quality products in ordinary shops and so on?

Are there no reports of these activities?

And are there any such activities?

Democratic Criminals

The president of the Swedish Social Democratic youth organisation, Anna Sjödin, was charged for violent assault on a guard at a restaurant in Stockholm a few months ago. She was recently sentenced for this and for stealing his badge and calling him racist names. She does not want to resign.

In the new right-wing government, the minister of Culture, Cecilia Stegö Chilò, has not paid television licence for the last 16 years. She does not want to resign.

The new minister of trade, Maria Borelius, employed baby sitters without declaring it; she has not paid her television license since she recently moved back to Sweden from England, she has not paid any tax for the benefit of living for free in a house in Sweden owned by a company from Jersey and she has failed to follow laws to prevent insider trading. She does not want to resign.

These people should be sacked straight away. This would be undemocratic. To prevent people who have committed petty crimes from taking part of the government would exclude a large part of the population, who actually are Swedish citizens, and who have citizen rights. However, even though it is undemocratic, they should be sacked. Honesty is more valuable than democracy.

Hit and run

The only possible punishment to North Korea, 조선민주주의인민공화국, for its nuclear test seems to be hit and run.

Military action is out. The risks in human lives is far too high - especially considering Seoul's (서울) close location to the Northern border.

Economic sanctions are also out. They would isolate the North even more, and it would victimize the population much harder than the decision taking leaders.

One possibility is a sudden and hefty sanction. During one month, there will be no contact with North Korea. No food, no fuel, no contacts at any level. After that, go back to full economic exchanges to help the poor fellows out.

A one month sanction would certainly be felt in the North. The government would have big difficulties explaining to their population what was going on, when suddenly electricity and heating got cut off suddenly. And it would be difficult to explain to workers in foreign factories, why they were locked out from their jobs for one month without pay.

It would send the signal "the rest of the world will and can act".

Let them in

There is no cost letting large numbers of poor people into a rich country. It may be tricky to organise the integration fast enough, but it will happen sooner or later. The immigrants will be productive in a few years, and everyone will be richer.

Don't let them sink

It is said that The People's Republic of China, 中华人民共和国, and South Korea, 대한민국, Daehan Minguk, are very reluctant to see the government of North Korea, 조선민주주의인민공화국, Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk, crumble. The reason would be that it might trigger floods of millions of refugees, which will be very difficult to take care of.

If this is so, it is immoral. The potential refugees currently starve in their own country. Unless the regime goes, the high death rate in the North will continue. Not toppling the North Korean government means that we indirectly kill a large number of innocent victims in the North, who otherwise could have been saved.

Take as a contrast the European way. Western Germany merged with much poorer Eastern Germany. Helmut Kohl denied it would cost anything, but most people knew better. And yet they went for it. And Eastern and Central European countries are being admitted into the European Union at a high speed. We know it costs, but it would cost even more to leave them outside.

To History

A friend of mine is president of a major superpower. He has achieved several things which will make him go to history.

* He started a war against something that was not there. That war has so far cost around 50.000 lives.

* He insulted and provoked a country with a liberal president so they elected a new president which denies the holocaust and wants to erase Israel from the map of the world.

* He provoked another country so that they developed and detonated a nuclear bomb.

Sometimes I have a feeling my friend has not understood that the important thing is to succeed. Whether you are firm or flexible does not matter. Just make sure that you don't mess things up.

North Korea's Needs

North Korea claims, or at least pretends, to have performed its first nuclear test. It may also have been a lot of conventional explosives set off just to give the impression.

The news sites do not tell us why they do this, for the simple reason that no one knows why North Korea deliberately chooses to annoy the rest of the world.

However, it seems likely that they simply want attention. They are like the little boy whose parents do not care for him, so he does something - anything - to catch their attention. He breaks a flower pot, they shout at him, and he got what he wanted - a recognition that he is there.

The cry for help from North Korea may be more than that, however. It may be like Grand Fenwick, which in the story started war against the US only in order to lose and subsequently get plenty of American help to become rich. It is in other words a very ill expressed cry for help.

Not all knowledge is needed

There are few things as fascinating as the hunt for the inner truth about everything - elementary particles, quanta, the most distant parts of the universe.

However, to be honest, do we need to know it? Did God intend us to know it? Or was his purpose with these enigmas just to give us something to think of? Perhaps he sits there and invents new enigmas for us, as we find the answers to the previous ones. Once we find the atoms, he invents the neutrons, protons and electrons. And once we find them, he invents the quanta. And now he has come up with this clever string theory, which he knows we cannot possibly verify.

Let's work together

Nicolas Sarkozy wants all Europe to have common standards for immigration.

That is an excellent idea. However, instead of having a tough standard, which Sarkozy for some reason seems to want, it would open up the possibility to make sure that no European country locks non-Europeans out.