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Time Value of Money

The concept of the Time Value of Money is based on the assumption that having one million dollars today is better than having one million next year. The reason is obvious: With one million today, I can build or buy a house now, and don’t have to spend the winter freezing and sleeping under the bridge or in the woods.

Or I can rent out the house and have a nice income. Or buy a fishing boat and have a year worth of catch and my family does not have to die of starvation, or I can buy a factory and have one year of profit more, compared to waiting one year before I can use the money.

Or I might not even get to enjoy the million in a year because I am dead, or the million evaporates because those who I am supposed to get it from go bankrupt.
And there is another issue: Because of inflation, I can probably buy more stuff for a million today than I will get in one year.

All these three factors together are the justification for charging an interest when loaning out money: The utility of money (opportunity costs), the possibility of not getting it back (credit risk), and the decline of its value must be compensated (inflation), otherwise there is no economic reason to loan out money.
In fact there may be many other reasons to make a loan, but these lie outside this basic economic theory.

In the past many religions regarded time as a property of god, and charging money for something that belongs to god was regarded as sin. Another moral reason was that in medieval times borrowing was uncommon and happened mostly as a result of exigencies like crop failures or conflagrations, and it was seen as immoral to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.

But since the renaissance people became more mobile and engaged in commerce and entrepreneurship, so money became also a mean of business and production and a merchandise itself, which changed the view on the morality of interest.

The idea of the time value of money has been first developed by spanish theologians in the 16th century, known as the School of Salamanca, where a lot of groundbreaking intellectual reformation of the roman catholicism was done. They for example reformulated the concept of natural law and derived that every human has the same rights to life and liberty because all humans share the same nature, and that there are not only limits to the legitimate power of governments, but government itself is a consensus of free wills and is only entitled by a temporary transfer of the people’s divine sovereignty to the ruler. These guys practically came up with an intellectual foundation for the modern understanding of democracy where everyone has the same rights, unlike Greek and Roman democracy, where slaves, other races and non-citizens could not vote. They also invented the concept of just war, outlawing expansionist wars, wars of pillage and wars to convert infidels. These theologians were way ahead of their time, and in some respects our modern society still does not live up to their philosophy.

I am stating all this because I think it is important to put the question about the morality of interest into some context. Today, there are still people who hold on to the ancient thinking that taking interest is immoral and we all would be better off having an economic system with outlawed interest like under islamic law.
But today even all islamic banks of any significance charge interest in some form. There are however some interesting concepts in islamic banking regarding the share of risk and profit between creditor and debtor, and as islamic banking experiences extraordinary growth rates, western bankers would be well advised to look into some of these principles as an interesting opportunity for creating new and possibly sustainable credit products.

However, it seems to me that all these principles in islamic banking are mainly ways to find loopholes in islamic law to accommodate for the existence of the time value of money without explicitly charging interest.

One common example in islamic banking is to buy the financed asset on behalf of the debtor and sell it to him for a higher price, which is not different from charging interest. But there are important differences in islamic banking how defaulting on payment is handled in most cases: Creditor and Debtor split losses or gains when the asset is sold, and there is no additional penalty for the debtor in case of defaulting, which is substantially different from the western principle where in theory the debtor bears all the losses and additional fees, but in practice often the creditor loses a lot because the debtor is bankrupt. In islamic banking, the interests of creditor and debtor seem to be better aligned from the start, and although I do not consider the sharia as an adequate basis for life in the 21st century, often artificial restrictions bear interesting solutions.

The problem with interest in general is not that it is charged, the question is how much is adequate. And one problem with the american style turbo-capitalism is that expectations on what an adequate return on investment should be are totally insane.

If you apply the concept of time value of money to these rates, you will easily see how insane this is, and how these expectations can only lead to unsustainable business practices by focussing on short term results, completely ignoring the long term.

Let us assume we have an idea that will bring a company 1 Mio. Euros of net earnings, but it will take five years of research and development before the stuff can be sold. At the same time, the management of the company promises a return on investment of 20% per year. From todays perspective, this 1 Mio. earnings in five years is just worth 400.000, which not only means that such a long term project has to bear the risk that in five years the market will be totally different and we might not be successful, but even if we are successful, a sure success in five years today is worth only 40% of what it will yield then. This makes any long term project even more undesirable.

Here is a table that shows the present value of 1 Mio. € in five years, discounted by different rates of expected return on investment:

Therefore, as a rule of thumb you can say: The more return on investment a management sets as goal, the less likely the company will pursue long term projects because future earnings are heavily discounted.

The numbers get really troublesome if you consider even longer time scales, for example 20 or 50 years, which are time scales you might think about when investing into growing trees, education or economic transformation. Depending on your expectations about economic growth and the return on investment, it seems prudent not to invest too much into long term projects. On the other hand, you should invest at least a little as early as possible in your life, because if you are lucky, you might as well get rich without risking too much.

As you can seean ROI of 10% turns 8000 € into a million in fifty years, which is something many people could have enjoyed who invested into U.S. stock fifty years ago.

On the other hand, investing now large amounts into sustainable energy when the we run out of oil not until in twenty or thirty years is not justified when you are a company that calculates with 20% ROI. The crux is, not investing now may kill billions of people then.

By the way, Exxon’s 2006 ROI has been 32.6%, and has even increased until 2008, when the company announced earnings of $11.68 billion in the second quarter of 2008, the highest quarterly earning any company in the history ever made. In 2008, the operating income was 33.8% of the total assets, and the net income 40% of the total equity. The revenue per employee was about 4.4 Mio. U.S. Dollars. With a revenue of $477 Billion, it would rank #18 in the list of countries by GDP, between Turkey and Sweden.

What confirms that companies with a high ROI do not invest into long term projects: Exxon spends only about 1% of it’s earning or 0.3% of its revenue on alternative energy.

But there is another astonishing number that puts this into other proportions: Exxon only produces 3% of the worlds oil and 2% of the worlds energy supply.
But let us get back to the topic money.

Do-It-Yourself Credit Money

When banks can create money out of nothing, why can’t ordinary people perform this miracle? They can. In many countries there is even a legal framework for doing so. This personal money is called a negotiable instrument and comes in two primary types: Promissory Notes and Bills of Exchange.

A Bill of Exchange is what is commonly called cheque, a written order to one’s bank to pay a specific sum to someone, and when the payee is unspecified respectively specified as the bearer, a cheque is like a bank note representing newly created credit money as long as it is not presented to the bank. If you want, you could print a truckload of nicely looking cheques of different denominations and circulate them.

A promissory note is very similar, except there is not necessarily a bank involved. A promissory note is an unconditional promise of payment of a specific sum. There are also numerous different types of promissory notes, and paper currency is basically a bearer negotiable promissory note or sola bill when the promising party and the party the note is presented to are the same.

Such promissory notes however are not what is called legal tender, which is by law a payment that can not be refused to settle debt. Most jurisdictions are quite protective about using other money than legal tender, and for example outlaw the use of foreign currencies and alternative currencies, or heavily regulate the use of negotiable instruments.

However, in Scotland for example there currently is no specific legal tender. The british 1£-Note is the only legal tender by law, but since it was taken out of circulation in 1988, there is no legal tender any more. But this does not seem to be a problem because scottish law says that “anything reasonable” must be accepted to settle a debt.
 

In practice however, five scottish banks print their own bank notes, which are just bearer negotiable demand promissory notes. These notes are accepted everywhere in Scotland, but you may have problems to pay with them in London, or get them exchanged back at home into your local currency. You may however present them at the issuing bank and exchange them for the amount of British Pound Sterling printed on the note. This is at least what the text on these bank notes says: “CLYDESDALE BANK PLC - PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND AT THEIR OFFICE HERE TEN POUNDS STERLING” - “BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS”, signed CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER.

 So here is an example of my personal bearer negotiable promissory note:

This would be real money when I would sign it by hand, and to my surprise and best knowledge, according to german law it seems to be even legal and enforceable, although such a paper issued by a private person is supposed to be illegal in many jurisdictions. (However, as a formality “payable to the bearer” must be noted on the back side). By German law, this note is also only valid for three years from the date it is issued. Now, by printing and signing a truckload of these promissory notes, I could effectively increase the money supply on my own. The only problem is that this is not legal tender in Germany, so no one has to accept it is as payment, and I would not be able to pay taxes with this money. However, if enough people would trust in it and accept it as payment, this should work quite well, and they could even present it in court to get their money when I would refuse to pay. The picture of me btw. is totally superfluous, but it might help to build trust, and it makes it look more like a bank note.

However, it just references the Euro as currency, so it is a kind of “proxy”, and its value is exactly one Euro. It might be worth even less than one Euro when people would factor in the credit risk, but I could even make up for that by promising on the note interest to be paid; this is also covered by the law.

 Now, what about this Note?

First of all, instead of my grinning face it has a picture of my daughters cat sitting on my brothers laptop on it, which looks really cute, but that is not the point.
Legally it is not a promissory note because it does not properly specify the amount of money to be paid: “One Fnord” is nothing a court would be able to make any sense of. However, when people would decide that this note for whatever reason has some value, they could use it as money. But in order to build trust for my new Fnord currency, I have a lot more options beside putting a cute cat on the note.

First of all, I could set up a business where people can pay with Fnords, getting something of real value in exchange, organic cat food for example.

Second, I could set up a currency trading exchange where people can post offers to buy and and sell amounts of Fnords for a whatever price in Euros they want; I would just pocket a small fee for every transaction.

Third, I could open up the Cute Kitten Reserve Bank, printing a whole range of notes with cute kitten on it, with different useful denominations. People could also make Fnord loans there against collateral, or deposit Fnords and receive interest.

Fourth, to maintain the value and a good exchange rate, I could publish and enact a responsible monetary policy for the Fnord. I would be careful to not to circulate more Fnords than there is demand for, and the Cute Kitten Reserve Bank would open up a Euro account in a normal bank, maintaining some foreign currency Euro reserves, and daily publish the amount of euro reserves and the amount of Fnords in circulation on the Cute Kitten Reserve Bank’s website.

I could also throw in my personal twenty ounces of gold reserves I own and promise not to touch or sell them except in case of a monetary crisis. Note that I would refrain from promising people gold in exchange for Fnords, that would be too easy and old fashioned.

And fifth, I could allow merchants to act as Commercial Fnord Banks, maintaining private Fnord accounts for their customers, and make Fnord loans. Of course they would have to deposit a fraction of their customers deposits at the Cute Kitten Reserve Bank.

On the side, I could mint small denomination Fnord coins with cute kitten on it, and pocket the money as seignorage.

Finally I could apply for membership in the International Monetary Fund, depositing Fnords, some of my Euros and a few ounces of Gold there, and get Special Drawing Rights in exchange that I could use to stabilize my Fnord currency in case I get under pressure from evil Hedge Fonds or Carry Traders who engage in speculation against the Fnord, or in case cat lovers flee out of the Fnord because of unsubstantiated rumors about me mistreating our cats.

Looks like a lot of work to establish a new state of the art currency, but it could be done, except probably the IMF membership. And a large corporation or bank could easily establish a new currency. However, there is no good reason to do this, except maybe having notes with cute kitten on it.

Multiple currencies within the same jurisdiction are an unpleasant thing. They change their value against each other, merchants need different kinds of cash and must put multiple price tags on their goods. But the main problem is that smaller currencies will easier come under pressure, causing bank runs and heavy inflation when people move from one currency to another.

And this is not just a theory; in the past, in many countries there was exactly this situation, and in the United States there was the so called “Free Banking Era” between 1837 and 1862, where about thousand different banks issued all their own bank notes, and some of them engaged in so called Wildcat Banking. These banks were located in remote areas to make it difficult to redeem the notes against gold or silver. And although the bank notes were supposed be be backed by gold and silver, many notes did not trade at face value because of the logistics involved. Another problem was that the average lifetime of a bank was just five years, and more than a few bank owners screwed the depositors and ran away with the gold before people could redeem their notes.

However, this “Free Banking Era” was not what is really considered as “free banking” by the proponents because the banks still had been regulated by the individual states, and the currency was just representative money backed by specie (Gold and Silver coins). The experience with free banking seems to be generally negative, with the possible exception of Sweden. With free banking, banks are are businesses like any other, without monetary authority, reserve requirement and legal tender, and everyone is allowed to run a bank without special licensing.

Having multiple currencies in one country is like having a 19th century isolated and heterogenous electrical power system with different voltages, plugs and even direct current instead of alternating current in different cities. You were not be able to use light bulbs, electrical appliances or machines in another city, and had to endure long lasting power failures when the local power plant broke down or ran out of fuel.

A central banking system is a bit similar to a national power grid. It makes the power supply more stable and helps to balance load, but when it fails, much larger areas will be affected.

Money Summarized

Money today is credit money, created out of nothing by simultaneously creating the same amount of debt. Money and debt are a product of trust, and money is a unit of account for trust. The government and the state is technically not behind the money, and does not and can not create money. Money is backed by debt, so while technically the government is not behind the money, the value of money is in multiple ways dependent on the government. First of all, governments are very large debtors, normally the largest single identifiable debtor, so when the trust into the government to meet its obligations is weakened, the trust into money is substantially weakened. This alone is able to play havoc with a currency. But there is even more: The government defines the policy of the monetary authority which controls the money supply. And finally, the government enacts legislation that regulates and monopolizes the sort of money that is used by declaring it fiat money and legal tender, effectively banning alternative currencies, which must be considered a good thing as long as the government acts responsibly on the first two issues, being a reliable debtor, and enacting a good monetary policy.

However, when the government fails on these issues, the result is hyperinflation and domestic credit money becomes unsustainable. People then fall back to use a foreign currency and commodity money. Both alternatives pose problems for the domestic economy: Using a foreign currency in such a situation typically results in a way too small money supply, and the use of commodity money just is not up to the task sustaining a modern economy.

Outlook

All those new financial instruments are very clever and useful inventions, like nuclear power plants, but the risks involved, the lack of regulation and the amount of greed, stupidity and hubris in the financial world brought our financial system to the brink of collapse.

What makes the situation especially unpleasant is that our financial system has become dependent on these new financial instruments, and with many of these instruments discredited and inoperable, the financial system in triple jeopardy: Fixing the problems these instruments caused, operating without these instruments, and developing new instruments in a climate when everything new or innovative in this field will be treated with extreme suspicion.

Our financial system is in a state of regression, falling back to old tools and old methods of direct government intervention, which is going to cause new problems on its own. Direct government intervention is inefficient and wasteful, and the decision makers are usually personally isolated from the consequences of their decisions. It is not their own money that is at risk, and in this respect the government decision makers are not much different from the many investment bankers that were playing with other peoples money. The incentive structure however is different, and becoming a politician who decides about billions does not require any specific qualification or even rudimentary economic knowledge at all. And when talking about more regulation, which is absolutely necessary, people often forget that more regulation also means more bureaucracy, which in general does not help to accelerate things.

Under the “metal theory of money” this crisis should be over as soon as the markets will have completed the deflation of the asset bubbles and the losses are written off, but our money and our financial system are not directly based on assets like houses, estate, factories, machines, licenses, commodities, raw materials, weapons, energy and manpower.  

Otherwise the only events that should cause real economic problems would be natural disasters, crop failures, overpopulation, nuclear accidents, plagues, wars, ecological disasters or the depletion of natural resources. The latter three may have contributed to the current crisis, as we probably have reached peak oil at the time the crisis began, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did cost some serious money.

But in a world of credit money, with the exception of energy supply, assets do not really matter economically that much, and we live in a credit world for more than hundred years. Take Germany’s economic recovery after the loss of WWII. Unimaginable amounts of resources have been wasted in the war, a lot of infrastructure has been destroyed, large parts of the territory lost, but as soon as confidence into the future was restored, there was a huge economic growth that turned Germany into the third largest economy in the world. The first world countries also have decades ago crossed the point where covering the basic needs of their population poses any problems for the economy. In Germany, Europe’s largest producer of agricultural products they contribute less than 1% to the GDP.

The current crisis is a crisis of trust, and because we live in a world of credit money, our economy is mainly based on trust. Unfortunately many participants of the global financial system have made poor decisions that made them less trustworthy.

Without trust, the whole machinery started to deconstruct itself faster than most could cope with, and the strain on some components became too severe, with the threat of cascading failures. If the governments would not have come out to stabilize the whole thing, we might be living of food stamps by now.

Despite cracks and casual implosions, the system did not collapse yet, but the danger of collapse is still imminent, although the situation has stabilized a bit. In April 2009 we may possibly still not have reached the bottom, but since March 2009 DAX and Dow Jones are climbing for a month now, and crude oil is also on the rise for two months.

The DOW is already below its 2002 low, but the DAX is still above its 2003 low. When the "new economy" bubble did burst in 2000, it took two years to reach the bottom, and one year at the bottom before the stock markets began to recover. Right now we are just one and a half year on the way down, but this does not mean anything. No one can claim to know what will happen in the next years. The consequences of the failures of the new financial instruments are not well understood, and there is still no transparency in the whole market. No one really knows how much he has lost yet.

The outlook is still grim, but there might be also a positive effect of some of the new financial instruments. The markets have become more volatile, so we could get to the bottom faster, and recover faster. And on the plus side, the oil price has fallen by 60%.

But this is not the most probable outcome. Overshadowed by the current financial crisis, we probably ran into another oil crisis, that was stopped by the financial crisis.
The financial crisis can be overcome with time and moderate effort, but the next oil crisis is already lingering on the horizon, and this problem requires substantially more effort to solve. And we still have the global warming, deforestation, overfishing, pollution, population growth in some countries, and unfavorable population pyramids in many countries. These fundamental problems are not only unsolved, they are worsening.

So we will definitely see a really bad crisis at some point in the 21st century that will dwarf everything we have seen since WW2, but we don’t know exactly when this will happen, but it will happen within a lifetime, very probably between 2030 and 2040. Currently the world population still grows exponentially, but every possible model predicts that we will have at maximum a linear growth in the next decades, with a much higher probability that the curve will turn to logarithmic growth or even decline. Now, when the curve changes, this will not happen because of a voluntary decision of the people, it will be due to famine, plague and war.

The other fundamental problem is the energy crisis. Without a substitute for oil, gas and coal up to 90% of the world population will die when we run out of it. We just won’t have enough energy to feed and shelter more than a billion people in the world. Oil, coal and gas account for 85% of our global energy supply. While coal will last for another 150 years at current consumption, at least 50% of the oil and gas consumption need to be substituted by 2050. This will cost some serious money, no matter what will be chosen as substitute. But it is affordable, it will cost us just in the order of one year’s world GDP to achieve that, so if the world dedicates annually 5% of its GDP to this cause, it should be done within 20 years. However, this would mean that the U.S. alone will have to invest $700 billion every year into energy supply change.

It is all a matter of timing. Starting too early will make it expensive, starting too late will be a disaster for the latecomers because all the money needed to make the change will be siphoned away from them by a high oil price. At $50 per barrel, the U.S. consume $365 Billion worth of oil per year, and the oil price is expected to reach $200 in a few years after the current crisis is over.

So is the current crisis just the popping of a virtual bubble caused by greed and stupidity, or do we actually start to feel the "Limits to Growth", approaching a possible Malthusian catastrophe?

Just looking at the numbers of consumption and reserves, judgement day is still a couple of decades in the future. The current crisis even might be godsend by acting as a reminder that the hunt for money is not the purpose of human existence.

And money is no substitution for trust. Money is a product of trust, and to cite WP: "Trust is a relationship of reliance. A trusted party is presumed to seek to fulfill policies, ethical codes, law and their previous promises."

In our complex world, we have to live with incomplete information about almost everything, and trust is the state of mind that allows us to overcome this problem and act with confidence despite incomplete information and comprehension.

It takes just two seconds to destroy trust, but many years to build it. That is the most unpleasant fact in the current situation. It will take time to rebuild trust, and trust will not come back just by sitting there and waiting for a better time.

Currently people turn to their governments, but the governments around the world are also to blame for the current crisis, with the U.S. government being the economic opinion leader in the world for decades.

The United States are still the most powerful economy and can change faster than many other countries in the world, but from a european point of view, they are a cruel society that ignores poverty, practices the death penalty and has more people locked up in prisons than any other country in the world. And thanks to eight years of Bush Administration, the United States are close to morally bankrupt and did lose a lot of authority in the world. What however speaks for the american people is that they too regarded Bush as the second most unpopular president in history when he left the white house, only surpassed by Richard Nixon.   
It is unclear how that might affect the U.S. and the world economy. Money and morale are known to be different things, and countries also do not exist by moral codes.

On the other hand, this crisis has proven that the world has become a small planet, and everything is linked by the flow of money and debt.
The dilemma we all now face is, that in times of scarce money, those who have it become even more powerful, and it is a good idea for every person or business to keep money to itself. For all of us and the economy this is a disaster.

So the only solution I can see is that the society in form of the governments will strongly motivate people to spend and invest their money. There is an easy way how this can be done. The one thing that people hate most when it comes to money is to pay taxes, so when you give people the choice to either pay taxes or invest the money, they will happily invest it and even borrow money and spend much more than they save on taxes, even making totally unsound and risky investments. And this way the government still leaves some control and the execution to the individual, instead of collecting and distributing itself, which is always a problem.
So what are useful investment the government should subsidize by specific tax reduction and deduction?

There are many useful things that can be done, but my list looks like follows:

• Forestry: Planting and growing trees is a long term investment (20-100 years), but you get energy, oxygen, building material, soil, water, a better climate, recreation space and good karma from growing trees, and most of the time you can leave the trees unattended, they know how to grow by themselves
• Education: Also a long term investment, but possibly the next best thing to trees. Invest money into schools, teachers, universities and facilitate life long education.
• Sustainable Energy Supply: The transition will be unavoidable, and there are already many useful things that will even give you a good return on investment: Energy saving cars, houses, house appliances, solar heating and power generation, wind power, water power, biofuels and energy saving in production, just to mention a few.
• Information Society Development: The future economy will be an economy based on efficient information processing. This does not only include technology, it is about new businesses, services, administration and new ways of life. If we want to stay a first world country, we must not only make sure everyone has access to information technology and can master it, but also make sure political and economic decisions are driven by it. This can be mitigated by free and open access to as much information and tools as possible, on all levels of government, educational institutions and businesses. Wikipedia is a primary example, but there should be also practically free access to digital libraries containing all books of the world, all TV programming, all teaching material of schools and universities, and all research results paid for with public money, and all kinds of work of art. To make that possible, in some cases new remuneration schemes for those producing and making this works accessible should be subsidized.
• Housing: Yes, even after the housing bubble, there is always need for new houses, especially in the U.S., where many houses are not very durable so every year over a million houses must be replaced; think about making them longer lasting and more energy efficient, and put some policies on urban development in place so people can live closer to their workplace, shops, schools and other places they need to go to.
• Water Supply: No water, no life.
• Transportation Infrastructure: A good transportation infrastructure pays for itself, and people also understand that it is a good thing because they benefit directly.
• Recycling - Instead of creating landfill, most of the raw materials from properly designed products can be reused, helping to preserve limited natural resources

And finally some stuff the government should not subsidize or where it should reduce spending:

• Military: I am a proponent of having adequate military forces, I believe that every country should be able to defend itself. However, the U.S. military spending accounts for 50% of the worlds military spending; this would make only sense if the U.S. would be planning against an invasion from outer space, or for a military conquest of the whole world. Some military is needed, but the current status is ridiculous. If you drop U.S. military spending to 40% of the current budget, the U.S. will still be spending more than the European Union. And if everyone drops military spending to a necessary minimum, we all profit. Arms control works.
• Intelligence: All the fifteen intelligence services were not able to prevent 9/11, and they also did not prevent a criminal like George W. Bush to cause much more political, financial and geo-strategic damage to the United States than any foreign service or conspiracy could have ever achieved. All this money and brainpower could have been put to much better uses. Secret Services are mostly useless and harmful. If China, Russia, Israel or Pakistan would chose to nuke New York, the services would not be able to prevent it; right now the only thing they are capable of doing is to give some groups a reason to nuke U.S. cities.
• Nuclear Power: It might be tempting to solve our energy problems using nuclear power, but we will run out of Uranium in 70 years without breeder reactors, and breeders are expensive and dangerous. Nuclear power is useful in the outer solar system where there is insufficient radiation energy from the sun, be we don’t need it on earth, except for submarines and aircraft carriers. The main reason why countries like nuclear power is to be able to build "the Bomb" in case they need it. Germany and Japan for instance could have a bomb production factory up and running within 30 days if they would choose to do so.
• Incompetitive established Industries: Especially those industries where excessive world wide over-capacities exist like in car manufacturing should either survive on their own or vanish from the market. However, tariffs should be introduced for all imported products that are not produced under sufficient social and ecological standards.

Remark

This was only a small excerpt from the whole paper, which continues to discuss some alternative economic systems, how justice can be done, the question of a world goverment and what the world in 2050 in expected to look like.

Kontroverse Angeheizt durch den Nedap-Hack wird der Einsatz von Wahlcomputern zur Zeit in Deutschland und Holland heftigst diskutiert. Dabei treffen zwei Fronten aufeinander: Bei den Befürwortern stehen natürlich die Hersteller, zusammen mit den politischen Vertretern und Behörden, die Wahlmaschinen genehmigt oder für viel Geld beschafft haben, auf der anderen Seite machen technisch versierte Experten und Bürgerrechtsgruppen zunehmend Druck, da das Ausmass des Problems von den Wahlmaschinenbefürwortern offenbar bewusst nicht zur Kenntnis genommen wird. Technologiebegeisterte Menschen müssten es eigentlich begrüssen, wenn durch Einsatz von Technik Wahlen effizienter, bequemer und sicherer durchgeführt werden könnten. Dieses Versprechen wird aber von keinem der zur Zeit auf der Welt eingesetzten Wahlcomputer eingelöst - daher ist der Anteil der Kritiker gerade unter den “Computerverstehern” besonders hoch. Unbändiger AutomatisierungsreflexDie Gründe für den Wunsch nach Wahlcomputern liegen vordergründig auf der Hand: Der Einsatz von Wahlcomputern vermittelt den Anschein von Modernität und erscheint irgendwie zeitgemäss. Handarbeit ist teuer und rückständig. Und tatsächlich: Automatisierung kann grundsätzlich viel Zeit und Geld sparen und die Produktqualität stark verbessern. Das sind wir aus der Automobilproduktion genau so gewohnt wie beim Einsatz von Computern in Unternehmen und Verwaltungen. Computer können grosse Mengen von Daten speichern, auswerten, übertragen und dieses mit einer hohen Präzision wiederholen. Dies wäre sicher auch beim Wählen wünschenswert. Am besten wäre es sogar, wenn man sich zum Wählen gar nicht zum Wahllokal begeben müsste, denn das ist das Teuerste am Wählen. Jede Wahl im Wahllokal dürfte mit Hin- und Rückweg zwischen 20 und 30 Minuten dauern, was im Durchschnitt auf 3 bis 5 Euro hinausläuft, während die öffentliche Hand 1 bis 3 Euro je Wähler aufwenden muss. Allerdings wären Online-Wahlen von Zuhause aus in Deutschland eh nicht ohne weiteres möglich, denn das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat der Präsenzwahl im Wahllokal absoluten Vorrang eingeräumt. Nur bei der Präsenzwahl ist sicher, dass die Stimmen geheim bleiben und nicht verkauft oder erpresst werden können. In Estland wurde dafür folgende Mischlösung gefunden: Die Internetwahl findet eine Woche lang bis zur Öffnung der Wahllokale statt, und man kann in der Woche seine Stimme so oft wie man will ändern. Anschließend kann man immer noch im Wahllokal seine Stimme abgeben, die die Online-Stimme ungültig macht. Das Problem hierbei ist aber, dass die Anonymität der Stimmabgabe nicht sicher gewahrt werden kann - ein Problem, dass vielen elektronischen Verfahren anhaftet. Das Dilemma der elektronischen Wahl Es ist offenbar ein Naturgesetz, dass man mit elektronischen Geräten allein nicht zugleich sicher (öffentlich nachprüfbar) und geheim und frei (unbeeinflusst) wählen kann, sondern jedes denkbare elektronische Verfahren höchstens zwei dieser drei Anforderungen zugleich erfüllen kann. (Sollte das noch niemand vor mir so als Gesetz klar geäußert haben, reklamiere ich hier die Urheberschaft unter der Bezeichnung “das Prokop’sche Dilemma der elektronischen Wahl”.) Warum ist das so? Die physikalischen Vorgänge bei der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung können von menschlichen Sinnen nicht direkt erfasst werden kann, da hier elektrische Ladungen oder Magnetfelder in kleinsten räumlichen Dimensionen beinahe lichtschnell verändert werden. Im Gegensatz zum Stimmzettel ist es mir also nicht möglich, das weitere Schicksal meiner Stimme mit meinen Sinnen direkt zu verfolgen. Es gibt aber auch bei elektronischer Wahl eine Möglichkeit, mich sicher darüber zu informieren, was mit meiner Stimme passiert. Leider muss ich sie für diesen Zweck wiedererkennbar machen, damit ich sie in einer öffentlichen Liste der ausgezählten Stimmen wiederfinden kann. Meine Stimme ist dann nicht mehr völlig anonym, sondern allenfalls noch pseudonym. Das heisst, niemand ausser mir weiss, das es meine Stimme ist, da nur ich die frei oder zufällig gewählte Markierung kenne. Dadurch werde ich aber käuflich und erpressbar, da ich auf Verlangen des Käufers meine Stimme präsentieren kann. Das oben geschilderte Mischwahlverfahren in Estland scheint gegen Stimmenkäufer oder -erpresser ausreichend sicher zu sein, es kann aber dadurch keine echte Anonymität garantieren, denn die Stimme muss ja prinzipiell mir zugeordnet werden können, sobald ich von der Möglichkeit der erneuten Stimmabgabe Gebrauch mache. Würde man dagegen eine echte anonyme elektronische Stimmausübung ermöglichen, wäre die Stimme handelbar und verkäuflich. Es ist wie verflixt: Löst man elektronisch das eine Problem, handelt man sich dafür stets eines der anderen ein. Ein weiteres Problem, das sich durch Beobachten der Wahlurne recht einfach lösen lässt, ist elektronisch ebenfalls nicht ohne Nebenwirkungen überprüfbar zu machen: Das Hinzufügen gefälschter, im Namen von Nichtwählern abgegeben Stimmen. Anonymität vor ÜberprüfbarkeitDie meisten derzeit verwendeten Wahlgeräte favorisieren Anonymität gegenüber Nachprüfbarkeit. Meist wird direkt im Augenblick der Wahl zufällig ein Speicherort ausgewählt und die Stimme dort gespeichert. Im Augenblick der Speicherung wird die Stimme damit anonymisiert. Dieser Vorgang ist damit für den Wähler prinzipiell nicht nachprüfbar. Ob und welche Stimme da gespeichert wird, hängt von für den Wähler nicht beobachtbaren Vorgängen in der Maschine ab. Damit ist der Wähler gezwungen, Dritten blind zu vertrauen. Paper TrailsEin absurder Versuch, Überprüfbarkeit herzustellen ist der sogenannte Paper-Trail. Damit wird die Wahlmaschine zum teuren Stimmzettel-Drucker. In Verbindung mit einer herkömmlichen Urne kann das ganze genauso sicher und nahezu so anonym wie die reine Urnenwahl funktionieren. Das kann zwar Vorteile bei der Qualität bringen, ist aber bei gleicher Sicherheit wesentlich teurer, da man sich allein auf die elektronische Zählung nicht verlassen kann und hinreichend viele manuelle Kontrollzählungen veranstalten muss. Auch handelt man sich bei einigen Geräten Anonymitätsprobleme ein, da sie die Stimmen fortlaufend auf ein Papierband protokollieren oder kompromittierende elektromagnetische Signale abstrahlen. Ausserdem dürften die Wartungs- und Verbrauchskosten der Geräte wesentlich über dem gedruckter Stimmzettel liegen, die unter 2 Cent/Stück zu haben sind. Daher sperren sich viele Kommunen in den U.S.A. gegen diesen Gerätetyp, für den es in Deutschland bisher keine Zulassung gibt. Warum auch, wo es doch eine Zulassung für billigere, unsichere Geräte gibt. Automatisierter WahlbetrugDie Automatisierungsvorteile, die sich durch den Einsatz von Wahlcomputern ergeben, sind vor allem für Wahlbetrüger erheblich. Während bei Urnenwahlen eine grosse Zahl von Helfern eingeweiht sein muss, um im grossen Stil abzuräumen, genügt bei Wahlcomputern im besten Fall eine einzige Person an der richtigen Stelle, die entsprechenden Code in allen Wahlmaschinen versteckt. Das ist zwar nicht ganz so einfach, aber allein in Deutschland dürfte es hunderttausende von Menschen mit dem erforderlichen Fachwissen geben, und der Aufwand an Zeit und Geld liegt in der Grössenordnung eines Mannmonats für eine professionelle Lösung. Ein mit der Maschine vertrauter Mitarbeiter des Herstellers kann in wenigen Stunden bereits schwer entdeckbare Manipulationen durchführen. Mit der Investition von einigen hunderttausend Euro ist es dritten sogar möglich, praktisch nicht zu entdeckende Manipulationen vorzunehmen, die die weitgehende Fernkontrolle eigentlich nicht vernetzter Maschinen erlauben. Erst durch die mit Wahlcomputereinsatz einhergehenden Automatisierungsvorteile wird es in einem Land wie Deutschland wirtschaftlich und organisatorisch möglich, erfolgreich in grossem Umfang Wahlfälschungen durchzuführen. Ökonomische BetrachtungWahlcomputer haben grundlegende Wirtschaftlichkeitsprobleme. Normalerweise werden Datenverarbeitungsgeräte ständig genutzt. Die Anschaffungskosten sind dabei meist deutlich geringer als Kosten für das nutzende Personal. Ausserdem veralten Computer noch immer innerhalb weniger Jahre. Wahlcomputer hingegen kommen nur für einen Tag zum Einsatz, und dass oft nach mehreren Jahren. Unterstellt man eine extrem hohe Lebensdauer von 20 Jahren, werden die Geräte kaum öfter als zehn bis zwanzig mal genutzt. Und wollte man Wahlcomputer für Bundestagswahlen nutzen, so bräuchte jeder Wahlkreis seine eigenen Geräte - ein Mitnutzungsszenario ist damit ausgeschlossen. Nimmt man nun Kosten für sichere Lagerung, Updates, Ersatzgeräte, Sicherheitsüberprüfungen und den Kapitalzins hinzu, ergibt sich ein Mehrfaches des Neugerätepreises, der je nach Gerät zwischen 4.000 und 10.000 Euro liegt. Über den Daumen braucht man je 1500 Einwohner oder 1000 Wahlberechtigte eine Wahlmaschine. Bei zehn Wahlen/Wahlmaschine käme man auf rund 1000 Euro je Wahlmaschine und Einsatz, das sind 2000-3000 Euro je Wahllokal. Dafür kann man eine Menge Erfrischungsgetränke und Sandwiches für Wahlhelfer kaufen. Und falls die Wahlmaschinen aus irgendwelchen Gründen, wie etwa Verlust der Zulassung, nur ein bis zweimal zum Einsatz kommen, wird das sogar deutlich teurer. Wäre ich Bürgermeister einer reichen Gemeinde, die sich jeden Luxus leisten kann, so würde ich meinen Leuten sagen: Für Wahlen nehmen wir Stift, Papier und Urnen. Das Geld stecken wir lieber in Laptops, Server und eine ordentliche Netzwerkinfrastruktur für die Stadtverwaltung und unsere Schulen. Open Source - ein Ausweg?Die meisten Hersteller von Wahlmaschinen arbeiten nach dem Prinzip “Security by Obscurity”, das nur so lange gutgeht, bis es eben schiefgeht. Und gerade Wahlcomputer, die 20 Jahre halten sollen, sind nach zehn Jahren technischen Fortschritts modernen Angriffstechnologien gnadenlos ausgeliefert. Logikanalysatoren, Emulatoren und Krypto-Tools erlauben rasches Reverse-Engineering von Soft- und Hardware auch ohne Herstellerdokumentation, und ordentliche, in ständigen Auseinandersetzungen mit immer böseren DRM-Systemen und anderen Gängelungstechnologien stehende Hacker zerlegen ein zehn Jahre altes System als wäre es aus Lego und beherrschen es anschliessend besser als der Hersteller. Die einzige Möglichkeit, ein halbwegs widerstandsfähiges System zu bekommen und über einige Zeit hinweg zu erhalten besteht darin, alle Details der schonungslosen Inspektion durch eine breite Menge von Experten auszusetzen und die notwendigen Geheimnisse auf wenige kryptografische Schlüssel zu beschränken, die sich allein in der Hand der Nutzer befinden. Nur so ist es auch weitgehend ausgeschlossen, das ein Hersteller etwa in Manipulationsverdacht gerät, wie es etwa bei Diebold der Fall ist. Ausserdem sollten Geräte für ein Land der Grösse der Bundesrepublik von mindestens hundert verschiedenen Herstellern geliefert werden, um die Auswirkungen von Hardwaremanipulationen einzuschränken. In den USA hat sich aus diesem Grund eine entsprechende Initiative gebildet, die das Ziel einer quellcodeoffenen Wahlplattform verfolgt. Auch ein kommerzielles Unternehmen hat sich der absoluten Offenlegung verpflichtet,wobei diese Firma sich bei den Wahlen in Alaska nicht unbedingt mit Ruhm bekleckert hat. Dennoch halte ich aufgrund des Prokop’schen Dilemmas auch Open Source Wahlmaschinen für keinen Ausweg. Sie eignen sich aber noch am ehesten als Wahlzetteldruck- und Zählmaschinen für eine computerunterstützte Urnenwahl. Alles andere gehört verboten.

Dear Mr. President, I am a person who enjoys a comfortable life in a western european democratic society, and I am grateful for the peace, liberty, security and the comparatively high standard of living I have the mercy to enjoy. You are the leader of the most powerful country in the world, and like most people on this planet I never had a chance to vote for or against you becoming president, although your decisions have quite an impact on my life and the society I live in. Therefore I feel to have the right to question your actions and address you in person, even if I do not expect that you will actually read or answer this letter. You might be offended by this letter because it is neither “political correct” nor shows the respect that would be deemed appropriate when addressing a head of a state, but I did not write this letter for the sake of offending you. I had to write this letter to express my humble concerns about the directions this world is headed under your leadership, and to raise my voice on behalf of many people in this world who see things from a different perspective than you and the people around you. In case this letter actually gets your attention, I hope you will find it at least partially helpful in finding some reasons why many of your action have turned out undesirable results. I do not envy you for your office, as it does not seem to be much fun being president, and the world is a cruel and complicated matter to deal with. No man can deal with such a burden without a lot of good friends and full support from the family, and obviously you enjoy both. Friends become most important when times get rough, and times have definitely been rough during your presidency, and you must have been grateful for the support you received from the people around you all the time. I have no idea which of those numerous actions you have taken during you presidency were you own ideas, and which were originally proposed by friends and staff members, but many actions are extraordinary questionable, especially those actions were you ordered people being deprived of their human rights, with the only “crime” they committed was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am aware that politics is a very complicated matter, much more complicated than science, business or military command because politics is about future behavior of an unimaginable number of people you do not know. The world being too complicated to deal with it using gut feeling, mankind has developed numerous mechanisms and principles to guide a mans actions, like science, philosophy, religious beliefs and laws. These are the essence of the lessons history has taught to mankind. You may choose to ignore scientific, philosophical or religious advice, and you may even choose to ignore the law and ethical issues in your actions. You may even get away with it if you are powerful enough, but only as long as you are powerful enough, and there is a price attached to doing so. I am not sure if you are aware of the price, and whether you are willing to pay it, but this does not change the fact that you, your friends, your family, your country will pay. Your country and the american people are already paying in dollars, fear and dead soldiers, but what you feel right now is just a small down payment on the total you will be presented over the next decades. 9/11 was just one bill you have been served because of questionable actions of former administrations, but future administrations will have to struggle for existence, and even may not be able to keep America afloat amid the waves you undulated. It it always easy to judge with hindsight, but some of your actions have already had disastrous consequences, prematurely ending the life of hundreds of thousand, and making life more miserable for hundreds of millions, but it is arguable that this might have been the lesser evil; at least, no spectacular terrorist attack on U.S. soil has happened so far after 9/11, and this may be attributed to your actions. However, you are loosing momentum, costs are piling up, no progress is visible and no victory is in sight, and you or your successor will not be able to sustain the current situation for a very long time. How do you intend to win? How much can you escalate the situation, and will escalation bring you closer to victory? You have just set your feet on a path that has been walked by many leaders in the last century: The path where the end seems to justify the means. I do not intend to compare your actions to the actions of a Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, but these three leaders are the most lucid examples for leaders who believed that the end justifies the means, and who went unrestrained to such extremes that we can not imagine the horror they brought to the people. Compared to World War II, both Iraq wars were just minor police actions. In WW II, on some days more people were killed in a couple of hours than in Iraq during both wars, and a president of the United States is almost a pawn compared to the unrestrained power of these dictators, who could kill anyone for any reason they wanted, and repeat it millions of times. In their time and their country they were very popular, worshipped almost like gods, which is also something you are far away from, so every comparison to them is just ridiculous. I also do not believe that you ever ordered to kill someone to get rid of that person. Although, I am not sure on this about your vice president, who has been involved in all kinds of dark and dirty government activities for decades. Being you, I would be really scared having this guy by my side. However, some of your administration’s actions do suspiciously look and smell like coming directly from a totalitarian poison cabinet. For example, calling something “Department of Homeland Security” sounds like something straight from George Orwell’s 1984, who took his inspiration not only from fascism and stalinism, but also from the post-war United Kindom and the United States of America. “Department of Homeland Security” sounds like a mixture of Orwell “Ministry of Peace” and “Ministry of Love”. Fortunately the CIA and the FBI as whole were not included in the DHS, and the Secret Service seems to be mostly intact and separated from offices under the umbrella of the DHS, but even considering mixing a police organization like the F.B.I. with a secret service like the CIA is a horrible thing. The Nazis had their Gestapo, later declared a criminal organization in the Nuremberg trials, and like East Germany’s Stasi they operated without judicial oversight. I hope your country gets spared from such a development. Although I do not think that the Department of Homeland Security or the other fifteen agencies and offices of the U.S. Intelligence Community are anywhere near Gestapo or Stasi yet, tendencies of a movement towards this direction seem to be on your agenda. By the way, who did come up with calling a law “Patriot Act”? It may have been a clever political move, but it sounds like Orwellian newspeak, and playing the patriot card can badly backfire if in the long run the results do not meet the expectations. At least “Patriot Act” was much more clever than calling something “Total Information Awareness Program”. How could you allow putting the term “total” into the name, not to mention the logo screwup? In Germany, there is the “Bundesstelle für Fernmeldestatistik" (Office for Telecommunication Statistics), a name that intends to bore the enemy to death, and does a good job to keep it out of the media. But let me get back to the “War on Terror”. Why does everything have to be a war in the U.S.? You had a “War on Drugs”, you were also accused to wage “War on Science”, “War on Freedom”, , “War on Workers”, “War on Allah”, “War on Muslims”, “War on Sex”, “War on Fun”, “War on Marijuana” , “War on Journalism” “War on Civilians” and a “War on Truth”. Others are waging a “War on Christmas”, “War on Spam”, “War on Cisco”, “War on Christians” , “War on Women”, “War on Apple”, “War on Cats”, “War on Caps Lock”, “War on Taxes”, “War on Junk”, “War on Hackers”, “War on Pigs”, “War on GOP” and a “War on Modern Menaces”. There is even talk about a “War on War”. This is really an inflation of a word that stands for the periods of greatest suffering in the history of mankind. Clausewitz in his most famous book defined the essence of war: “The war is an act of violence in order to force the opponent to the fulfillment of our will.“ So if the opponent is Terrorism, how exactly do you intend to force Terrorism to fulfill you will? I admit this sounds like finickiness, but why didn’t you call it at least “War on Terrorists”? The war on Terror or Terrorism is a war against an idea and a state of mind, but you can not force an idea to fulfill your will, no matter how violently you act. You can embrace or you can fight an idea, but you can not coerce an idea into anything. Yes, you can kill, deter or capture Terrorists, but this does not help to ged rid of Terrorism, because Terrorism is like a plague that infects minds, and especially easy it infects the minds of those who have come in contact with violence, torture or grave injustice. You and your advisors simply picked the wrong target, and by doing so, you created conditions that turned a small outbreak into a global epidemic. You are just fighting the symptoms, not the cause, and by misdirecting all your huge resources, you are wasting them, and you are steering your whole country into a defeat. You stepped into a trap, and every move you made since 9/11 has fueled the idea of Terrorism, and you even contributed to spread terror and fear not only in your country, but all over the world. Whoever devised 9/11, it was a full victory for Terrorism, and by they way you handled it, in the eyes of world and even in the eyes of many americans now you have become a Terrorist. According to recent polls, a majority of americans now think that you lied to them about 9/11, and many are even convinced that 9/11 was an inside job. How could it have come that far? I would attribute it to sloppy investigations, excessive secrecy, cronyism and the administration too often caught lying, so many people think this administration is capable of making every conceivable mess for a personal gain. To fight against an idea, you have to put other ideas in place, ideas that are so powerful that they can displace the idea of terrorism. In order to convince other people that your idea is good, you have to live it and breath it. You have to be a blazing example for this idea, and as a leader, you have to make sure all the people acting for you are ambassadors for your ideas. You have kids, so you know it does not work to tell them: “Do what I say, not what I do.” It does not help to pay lip service to the idea of Freedom and Democracy, you have to live it, and make the people to feel it. You obviously think that the end justifies the means, but it is the other way round: to envision the end, look at the means. Especially if goals are abstract, like Freedom or Fraternity, the only way I judge the campaigner’s goals is by the means he uses. It was easy to see that communism would not be a paradise just by looking at the means the Soviets resorted to, even if their cause, creating a just society, sounded noble in theory. And these are your visible means: You dropped bombs, sent tanks, put people in prisons where many of them were tortured. How could you believe this could convince anyone that your Freedom and Democracy is something desirable? You managed to make this words sound like doublespeak. When you would tell that you are going to bring Freedom and Democracy to my country, I would take my family and run for my life. Probably you believed that after replacing a rogue government in Afghanistan and Iraq, and let the people vote, prosperity and freedom would come and justify the means. This is a very naive view of the world, and I doubt you really still believe it. Maybe you believed it because it worked in Germany and Japan after WWII, but Germany was a completely different situation, and the Americans also behaved completely different here. When the G.I.s came to Germany in 1945, they liked it there, and they liked the Germans. In most other european countries the G.I.s came through, they were not treated very friendly, although the G.I.s gave their blood to free them from German occupation. The French for example did cheat and steel from your troops, and even the English people looked down upon you soldiers and treated many G.I.s like beasts. In Germany however, people were so scared from the Russians that they welcomed the Americans as lesser evil, and millions of men were dead, so a lot of women even welcomed american men. The american G.I.s, having fought their way through a devastated and hostile Europe, suddenly found themselves in clean rooms with soft beds and white linen, beautiful girls and disciplined men who just wanted to leave the war behind and rebuild their country. Your soldiers felt a bit like home, and there was mutual respects, and things went quite smooth here, and because of these special circumstances the occupation of post WWII - Germany is not useful as a precedent for “liberating” Afghanistan and Iraq. A better example to look at would be how Douglas MacArthur dealt with the situation in Japan, with people who had a completely different culture: “MacArthur himself arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately set several laws: No Allied personnel were to fraternize with Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to eat the scarce Japanese food.” “His first priority was to set up a food distribution network; following the collapse of the ruling government, and the wholesale destruction of most major cities, virtually everyone was starving.” “Once the food network was in place, at a cost of up to US$1 million a day, MacArthur set out to win the support of Hirohito.” “While other Allied political and military leaders pushed for Hirohito to be tried as a war criminal, MacArthur resisted such calls, arguing that any such prosecution would be overwhelmingly unpopular with the Japanese people.” It is sad that you have not put a man like Douglas MacArthur in charge of Iraq. I do not suggest you should have made friends with Saddam Hussein, but by shipping exile Iraqis with questionable character from the U.S. and putting them into key positions, treating all people from the old government as criminals and not committing enough resources to help the suffering people, you screw up royally. The British faired much better, but they could not make up for your mistakes, and you were in charge there. It worked much better in Kurdish provinces, where you let people take care of themselves because you could treat them as allies. By indiscriminately demonizing everybody connected to the Baath Regime, you laid the seed for new terror and put the country to the brink of civil war. For example, Tarek Aziz looks like someone you could have picked to help you out, and there surely must be have been many other respectable figures rooted in Iraq society and former government you could have come to terms with. But blinded by the arrogance of power you probably did not even consider such a step. You should have known that you can not treat the whole ruling elite as criminals and still control the country. Now you face the opposition of a large number of educated, well organized and respected leaders that operate from the underground, and a population that will dance on the streets the day you leave. Most people now have the impression that their life was better under Saddam Hussein. What a disservice for the idea of Freedom and Democracy. However, all this is just a screw up, and everyone has the right to screw up things from time to time, even the President of the United States. What really strikes me is how and why you destroyed your personal credibility and dishonored the United States of America by ignoring and downplaying the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions are not just pieces of toilet paper, they are international treaty signed by 194 countries in the world, and it is the result of unimaginable horrors that happened during numerous wars in the 19th and 20th century, and it is not only a tremendous indignity to all those millions who fought, suffered and died in these wars, it is a crime. All signatory states of Geneva Conventions were required to enact sufficient national law to make grave violations of the Geneva Conventions a punishable criminal offense, and so did the United States. And if you were at the receiving end of your actions, you would have no doubt about if the violations in Iraq and Afghanistan were grave or not. In a war, bad things happen. But after fighting the war, those who survive must continue to live in a civil society. Thats why people came up with these rules, even for war. It is not just a matter of being humane, it is a very practical thing, and it is meant not only to protect the weak, but it also protects the strong from beeing overwhelmed by the emotions war sets free. As the president and the commander-in-chief, you have the duty to protect and care for all the soldiers that serve you. By downplaying the Geneva Convention, you have not only set new precedents for the treatment of your soldiers in case they will be captured in a real war against a real enemy, you have also ruined the life of many of your own men who now face charges because they went too far, like in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Ishaqi, Hamadiya, Mahmudiyah, Mukaradeeb and many other places with incidents that have not yet surfaced. You did recently say that the Geneva Conventions are not precise. Have you read them? You should have done it. Although complicated, they are very precise, they even contain the amount of pay a prisoner of war is entitled to. Did you pay the Iraqi POWs? I have serious doubts about it. I will take the liberty and tell you something about the Geneva Conventions although I am not a lawyer, but the conventions are written in clear, easy to understand english words, even if it is british english. There are four conventions, but for the “War on Terror” number 3 and 4 are the important ones. Number 3 is about “Treatment of Prisoners of War”, and Number 4 is about “Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”. Any person falls in one of two categories, soldier or civilian. There is nothing in between. Soldier or Civilian. Your newly invented category of “Unlawful Combatants” does not appear anywhere in the Geneva Conventions. It is criminal bullshit, just “designed to put detainees beyond the reach of any law”. And any law you come up with for them will not be accepted by the international community, and any conviction or punishment you will make using your private “law” is just another criminal act against existing international law. So what does the existing international law say? There are some criteria to distinguish between soldiers and civilians, but no matter what category a person falls into, under no circumstances torture or inhumane treatment is permissible, and the threshold for what constitutes inhumane treatment is low, and even threatening someone with pain is not allowed. And again, it does not matter whether the person in question is a soldier or civilian. There are indeed persons where none of the conventions apply: Foreigners from a country that has normal diplomatic representation in the United States. These people are supposed to be protected through normal diplomatic means, like informing the ambassador of this person’s country and granting access in case this person is being accused of crimes. But let us start with what the Conventions have to say about prisoners of war. At least there had been a regular Iraqi army fighting for three weeks, and many prisoners were made who were definitely prisoners of war. Now compare some excerpts from the Third Convention “related to Treatment of Prisoners of War” to the pictures you have in mind from the advance of coalition troops during the early days of the war: (Art 13): "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated." "…Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity." (Art 17): "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." (Art 60): "The Detaining Power shall grant all prisoners of war a monthly advance of pay…" Now let us assume that most of the people detained after May 1th 2003 are no prisoners of war, although most of higher ranking soldiers were probably detained after this date. If they were not granted POW status, that would make them civilians. The difference between being granted POW and civilian status is that you can not punish a soldier for carrying weapons and killing in battle, while you can charge a civilian for that. Mercenaries for example are to be treated as criminal civilians. Unlawful combatants are civilians who shoot, bomb and kill. For example, many of the private security guards in Iraq could be charged for crimes against Iraqi or U.S. law after May 1th 2003 if they were using weapons to pursue insurgents. The same applies to all CIA operatives who were active in Iraq or elsewhere after this date. They are also not protected by the third convention and can be tried as civilians for their unlawful actions in many countries, including the U.S. However, even CIA operatives are protected by by the fourth convention in the same manner as any terrorist. Do you want your operatives be treated as “Unlawful Combatants”? Here are some excerpts from the Fourth Convention “related to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power.” (emphasisis added) (Art 3): … the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: - violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; - taking of hostages; - outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; - the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (Art 31) No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties. (Art 71) No sentence shall be pronounced by the competent courts of the Occupying Power except after a regular trial. Accused persons who are prosecuted by the Occupying Power shall be promptly informed, in writing, in a language which they understand, of the particulars of the charges preferred against them, and shall be brought to trial as rapidly as possible. The Protecting Power shall be informed of all proceedings instituted by the Occupying Power against protected persons … The notification to the Protecting Power … shall be sent immediately, and shall in any case reach the Protecting Power three weeks before the date of the first hearing. … The notification shall include the following particulars: ae715bd518185814e2c7dadb32a0a31f (Art 72) Accused persons shall have the right to present evidence necessary to their defence and may, in particular, call witnesses. They shall have the right to be assisted by a qualified advocate or counsel of their own choice, who shall be able to visit them freely and shall enjoy the necessary facilities for preparing the defence. I am sorry for bothering you with all those boring details, but my feeling is that the people around you might have forgotten to mention them, and you did not find the time to read this stuff, given your tight schedule in times of emergency. Maybe your lawyers told you there are some loopholes in all these international treaties and laws, but what you and your subordinates have done is clearly against the words and the spirit of these treaties, and as a president it is not your duty to look for loopholes, it should be you noble duty to defend those principles and values that made the United States the epitome of Democracy and Freedom. But look what you have done: You ruined a reputation that took two hundred years to build, and you gave the world the impression that the signature of a president of the United States under an international treaty is not worth the ink when the next administration has a different opinion. It tells every country in the world the that U.S. is no longer a trustworthy partner, and every treaty you make or have signed in the past will be looked upon with suspicion. You also should not be surprised if even more countries in the future will ignore some treaties, for example when questioning CIA operatives or american tourists. And what have you gained? Just one terrorist has been brought to justice in five years. The victims still have no peace because almost nobody has been found guilty by a court, and as as long as they have not been convicted, they are innocent. And it will be hard to ever bring them to justice because you tainted all the evidence by using illegal methods like torture to obtain the evidence. And not only you failed to bring the guilty to justice, you detained thousands of innocent people who will hate the U.S. forever. Whose stupid idea was that? Do you know what happens when you treat innocent people even worse like criminals, and even torture them? You not only create new terrorist, you give them also a just cause, boost their morale and and a solid base of support and sympathy, while you discredit yourself as a promoter of freedom, democracy and human rights. Where is the moral ground you are standing on? It is crumbling away day by day, and now you are standing on a stinking pile of filth in the midst of rotten carcasses that used to be sanguine ideals that made America prevail in previous wars. Another set of decisions puzzles me also. As a president, you have the privilege to choose many people for important positions not only in your administration, but you have also a lot of influence on who heads all kind of agencies, like the FEMA for example. Of course it is just human and normal to pick people you like and you can trust. However, the most important criteria is that the people you pick are up to task and make a good job, because if they screw up, their screw-up will be your screw-up. The overall impression is that you have chosen a number of persons for important positions who were not up to the job you gave them, and this is a bad thing. It is bad for you, it is bad for the people you have chosen , and it is bad for America. You alienated many of the best minds and talents in your country, including many upright servicemen, civil servants, scientists and artists, just like in a totalitarian regime. This is why totalitarian regime always fail in end: They are weakened by sleaze and cronyism, and usually the leaders can’t sustain the resulting price in form of lost lives and lost wealth long before they fall prey to more succesful pluralistic states. Why do you think did the Soviet Union fail? Not because communism was defeated by the west in the cold war, with all their resources they could have lasted another hundred years, just look how a communist regime in a poor country like Cuba or North Korea manages to survive. No, they crumbled because the political system was rotten down to the roots, and when the wind of change in the form of one man, Michael Gorbachev, came along, the whole system tipped over like a festered tree. Man, you are living in bubble, like those communist leaders who were told every day how great they are because they had no real friends who had the guts to tell them the truth. You do not make a great job, you are ruining your country, and all of Americas enemies must be happy to see how just one terrorist attack can bring a superpower down. The tragic thing is, I can not applaud to their victory, because it will bring the whole civilized world down, including my country. These people are my enemies just as your enemies, and I hate to see them gain ground every day. If you mismanage a corporation, the corporation will sooner or later go bankrupt. The U.S. can not go bankrupt that easy, it is too big, too rich and too powerful, and it would take probably more than a couple administrations like yours before the U.S. would hit the bottom like Germany in the late 1930s. When the Nazis saw that they were running out of money, they started WWII and just stole from their neighbors to keep the system going. This was often a popular last resort for a leader facing a grave economic crisis, but there is not enough wealth in the vicinity of the U.S. to pull the same stunt, probably only Canada might be worth invading. All other countries are too poor or too far away to make it a profitable endeavor. Just look at how bad the balance on Iraq looks right now. You are burning money there so fast that you will never be able to recoup before their oil wells run dry, and even raiding Iran probably won’t be worth the money. The U.S. has a much better way how to tap into the wealth and the resources of the world as long as it can peacefully manage the wealth of the world, and you have hordes of the best investment bankers in the world who know how to accrete money, and as long as they do a good job, the world will cue up to bring it’s wealth to America. However, money is like a herd of shy animals, and you have to be very careful not to scare the money away. Once it starts to flee, it will be like a stampede, and nothing can stop it. In the last century, the U.S. have build a hegemony including Europe, the Middle East and Japan, and while the U.S. were the big boss, they took their duty serious to take care of their hegemony, and everyone prospered. Today, you allies in the hegemony look irritated and with suspicion towards the United States, and have diverted from the course of unconditional solidarity with the U.S. they were following for decades. They ask themselves if you intend to "upgrade" your hegemony into an empire. Was it really necessary to push that hard for an invasion of Iraq and alienate many of your best friend countries in the world? And because a growing number of people in those countries that stayed close to you did disallow your policy on Iraq, the heads of at least two countries who supported you strongly have lost their jobs: José María Aznar López in Spain and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Your most important ally, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, is still in power, but his popularity is declining towards a point where he might be even more unpopular as John Major in his worst times, and this given that Blair did a quite good job and had been the most popular british prime minister ever before he decided to go to war with you. You will probably think that a good politician has to do unpopular things from time to time, and I agree with that. However, when 90% of the population disapprove a decision like the Spanish people the Iraq war, you need a miracle to survive the next election, and a leader behaving like this does not only damage his own reputation, but also discredits his party and all other political ideas he stands for, so the long term damage might be substantial. Again here is a pattern of trading an unsustainable short term advantage for grave long term consequences. At least, Aznar’s loyalty to the U.S. must have attributed to the warm welcome he received as a scholar at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, and together with his other job as a board member of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation he seems to enjoy an interesting a comfortable life as a respected scholar and businessman. I wonder what the future has in stock for you after your term will end. It is hard to imagine you as a scholar, but guiding other members of your family and taking care of various businesses should make you happy, unless all those people you pushed in various corners and all your questionable actions will come back to haunt you. You have bended rules, broken laws and caused so much controversy that it is very probable that armies of lawyers will come forward as soon as you and your friends will no longer be in power. Being you, I wouldn’t even trust fellow republicans to stay by your side when things start to get rough. You will have to rely on your family and a few grateful businessmen who owe you some big favors, and probably you can put also faith in some long time friends you made at Yale. A few days ago the Military Commissions Act of 2006 has been passed by senate. Colloquially it is called Bush’s “Torture Bill”, but after reading it, I did not find the name appropriate. I now do understand why Senator McCain also approved this bill; it really seems to intend to limit torture and cruel treatment of detainees, but given your administration’s track record, it is doubtful it can actually achieve that. Then again, used by your opponents, this bill could give you a hard time, given that this bill is retroactive and now there is implicitely even a penalty for outsourcing torture to other countries. It also does not shed a good light on America that your definition of torture in the bill falls a bit short compared to what the Geneva Conventions define as torture. Anyway, a better name for the bill would be “Tainted Evidence Rescue Bill”, or “Secret Trial Approval Bill”. A shorter, more sticking name might be “Kafka’s Trial Bill”. Although it is possible that if this bill is executed with good faith it might improve the situation for the detainees, it will be a nightmare for every person on this planet if used as a political tool, and given the low moral standards to which not only U.S. politicians of all flavors seem to adhere, this nightmare will come to many. From what I have seen in the last decades, every law with abuse potential has been abused, and this law does not even need to be abused to cause disasters. Seriously, was it really necessary not only to ignore the constitution, but also try to damage it severely by making such a catastrophic bill? Don’t you feel the vibration emanating from the graves of the founding fathers, whose unbalanced masses are spinning at an outrageous turn rate? And you should see the uneasiness in all democratic countries all over the world watching this. Now you really fell far behind every european country and many american and asian countries in terms of democracy, human rights and justice, and you are going to loose even more faithful allies in the free world. Most human-rights respecting countries will be very careful now when you ask for support, given the new parliamentary sanctioned low human rights standards in your country. After getting the bill passed, you must feel relieved, because you probably feel that you can now start to clean up the Guantanamo and secret detainee camp mess. But this relief will be short. Iraq does not get any better. Afghanistan is getting worse. Pakistan is acting up. The U.S. economy faces serious threats. Your budget is a disaster, and you owe the Chinese alone thousand billion dollars. The hurricane season has started. The polar caps are melting. Iran will have nuclear bombs. And the worst of all: the housing bubble has started to implode, and hedge fonds beyond the control of any single human being might bring the world economy to a grinding halt at any time. I pray to the lords every day that nothing really bad happens to the world while your administration is in charge of almost half the military power and the largest economy in the world. I honestly have been looking for things where I could say: You did a great job here, build on that. I really tried to be fair in judging about your work, but I did not find a single thing I could point out and say: Well done. Maybe your reelection could count as such a thing, but even your victory there was tainted by the circumstances. You have failed on every account known to me. I believe that it is your single-hearted desire to make this world a better place for everyone. However, the harder you tried, the worse things have gotten. The reason is, you tried too hard, you moved too fast, and you cared too little. After 9/11, you had the sympathy of the world, and it was at your hands to lead it into a century of freedom and prosperity. But you let the world down. Combining the resources of the United States, the European Union, Japan, India, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan would have easily brought over 60% of the world economy behind your efforts. Including all other democracies, it might have been even over 70%. And given the over 300 billion dollars you already spent on Iraq, there could have been a world-wide 1000 billion effort to fight the roots of evil using brains and bread, not bombs and blood. You could have used the U.N. and the international court of justice to punish those responsible for terror, including every head of any state harboring or supporting terrorists. The reason why you didn’t is because the United States do not trust anyone, not even it’s friends. Maybe you think that there can be no real friendship between countries because they all compete for the same resources. Feeling so alone, the worlds only superpower, you do not really respect any other country. And you do not respect the United Nations. And the countries in the world feel this lack of respect. Most countries tolerate it because they have no real choice. An open political confrontation with the U.S. is not easy to persevere. Previous administration were much more tolerant and patient with their allies, and I think it was a good thing for everyone. Maybe it was also because of the existence of the Soviet Union - you had to be the nicer guy or risk that other countries move closer to the eastern block if you bully them too much. Extraordinary power requires an extraordinary noble character - normal humans easily get corrupted by it, so the arrogance of your administration is just a normal human reaction. It does not mean that you are all bad guys. It just means that you were not extraordinary enough to be up to the gargantuan tasks you faced, and when you felt it deep inside, you couldn’t admit it, because to admit your failures you all would have needed even more nobility of mind than would have saved you from failing in the first place. So you lied to yourself until you all believed that you are doing a great job, while the gap between reality and your perception widened. When I served in the army, there was a saying that the U.S. military thinks that every problem can be solved with a huge enough explosion. And you definitely tried to blast many problems away, but this is also not how the world generally works. The largest power in this world comes from hearts and minds, and you should have learned this lesson in Vietnam. The U.S. in Vietnam fired on the average more than a million rounds per killed enemy fighter, and you dropped much more explosives on Vietnam than in WWII, but the result was a mortifying defeat, and you ruined your WWI and WWII reputation as the saviors of freedom for decades. Now you are facing another defeat in Iraq, but you still don’t know it. The sad thing is, you could have done better, and there must be thousands of people in your service who could have told you how. The history repeats itself. You had the choice between another Japan or another Vietnam, but you have chosen Vietnam because you were all blinded by superpower arrogance, overconfident on the outside, but in reality lacking the patience and the confidence to hear and listen to dissenting voices, even suppressing them. The best friends are those who tell you the truth - not those people who tell you what you want to hear. So what now? The situation is not hopeless, but you are so deep in shit that it is hard to envision how to clean up. No matter what you do from now on, there will be a huge price to pay, and you can’t make things undone. The hundred thousands of new enemies you created will not go away anytime soon, no matter what you do, and it will take decades to rebuild the reputation of the U.S. you have ruined. You seem to intend to escalate the situation by attacking Iran, but be warned: The Iran is about five to ten times as powerful as Iraq, and this time you would have a real war at your hands, not a police action thing like invading a starving Iraq. Just look how Israel fared in Lebanon recently - this was not a good rehearsal. And denying Iran the Nuclear bomb is not a sufficient reason for possibly killing a million of people. Pakistan has it, India has it, Israel has, and even South Africa once had it. Have you ever read the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? If you have, how can you expect any non-nuclear-weapon State to feel bound to it if the nuclear-weapon States have ignored the promise given in Article VI? When will you sign a "Treaty on general and complete nuclear disarmament", as your country has agreed on in 1970 in the Non-proliferation treaty? On the other hand, Iran might have a good reason to exercise the “right to withdraw from the Treaty if … extraordinary events … have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country”. A threat of invasion by the U.S. definitely “jeopardized the supreme interests” of a country. I do not want to see nuclear weapons in the hand of Iran, but I do not want to see them in the hands of any country in the world, especially not in the hands of the only country in the world that has used this nuclear weapons against civilians, as the United States of America did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The names of these two cities are forever engraved in the collective memory of mankind, and the world does not remember them as acts of boldness. And it was not necessary. Even after the bombing, Japan refused to surrender, and the military was ready to fight to the last man before beeing dishonored by abandoning the emperor. If the emperor himself had not demanded surrender, you could have dropped another hundred nukes and still had to invade the country. However, the price you had to pay for using the bomb was the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, which could have been avoided at that point. The United States and the world have been on the brink of nuclear holocaust several times, the last time in 1983 a nuclear holocaust almost happened because of a computer malfunction, and it has not been an American who averted it. As a result of Hiroshima, until today the threat of nuclear annihilation of the United States persists. In almost any conceivable situation the use of nuclear weapons on Iran would be a war crime, and even threatening a country with the use of nuclear weapons is a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law. Already the discussion of using nuclear weapons on Iran can be seen as conspiration to commit a war crime and is punishable even if never carried out. No sane person should even consider such a thing, and you should immediately remove any person from duty who dares to mention it as a viable option in a potential conflict with the Iran. You are already known to the world as someone who has little respect for human rights, but you don’t want to go down in history as a nuclear mass murderer. So better don’t even think about it, and make sure no one else in you vicinity does. You would face a mutiny not only of the arab world, but Japan and Europe would not forgive it, either. And don’t forget China and Russia. Especially China, whose nuclear arsenal is quite small would be tempted to start a new nuclear arms race, and in a short time you would have thousands of new strategic missiles pointing to your homeland. If this is what you want, just go ahead. America messed up Iran once already when Eisenhower ordered the CIA to remove the democratically elected government under Mohammed Mossadegh and brought a tyrant called Reza Pahlevi into power, who did such a bad job that he lost the country to Ruhollah Khomeini and the muslim hard-liners you are worrying about today. Just leave these guys alone, America has already screwed up their life enough, and the people there neither want to be freed nor bombed, and they have not attacked any other country since Iran exists. But they were attacked by Saddam Hussein, heavily supported by the U.S. at that time. I understand that you do not like the idea of them having nuclear weapons, but to me it is a miracle that they have not already obtained them, given that Israel has them illegally for many years. Why do you tolerate the Israelis to have nuclear weapons? It would be much easier for you to keep Iran from getting them if you would force Israel to nuclear disarmament, although you might not be able to do that. Israel has for many years successfully “used” it’s nuclear potential to force the United States to keep up diplomatic and conventional weapon support, because otherwise the threshold to the use of nuclear weapons would be much lower. However, although they came close, even Israel has not used it’s nuclear weapons during the last four wars, for good reason. And you don’t want to use yours again either, believe me. On the other hand, if you really want to see Iran nuked, just withdraw all your support for Israel and wait what happens. Israel probably has the better nukes for this anyway because they had to plan for using them on severly limited space. They probably have even enough neutron bombs to kill a large part of Irans population while leaving most of the infrastructure intact. However, Israel would not survive the political fallout, and neither would you. Now, if escalation is not a good option, what else could you realistically do? How about a 180 degrees turn of your policy? Withdraw from Iraq, send all the detainees home, let Afghanistan deal alone with it’s fate? Defeat all the constitution-gouging anti-terror legislation? Must probably sound like a dangerous pipe dream to you. But this is exactly what is going to happen sooner or later. You know that the current state of affairs is unsustainable, and escalating will even shorten the time until radical changes in the U.S. policy will become inevitable. So why not start right tomorrow? A good starting point would be a solution for the Israel-Palestine problem. As in every conflict, the root here is the struggle for resources. Israel has only such a tiny patch of land in this world that they cling to every acre of it. They annexed it from the palestinians by every method they could conceive, and rarely paid the previous owners a fair price. The palestinians were understandingly quite pissed about it and still are, but today they mainly struggle for their existence and a chance for their children to live in dignity. If you spend some billions on building houses, farms, roads, irrigation, water supply, electrical grid, schools and hospitals, the palestinians would be Israel’s and America’s best friends after two or three decades. Give the money monthly to a joint Israeli-Palestinian committee, and if they don’t agree on how to spend it, they won’t get any money at all. They also jointly control how the money is spend, and if any side wants to buy weapons, they can if they both agree. Israel did cost the U.S. taxpayer about $250 billion (purchasing power adjusted) in about 50 years, plus the $117 billion for Egypt and $22 billion for Jordan your country paid for the peace treaties with Israel, which was a wise thing to do, given that the oil crisis alone did cost a multitude of that. So if you start with shelving out about one billion per month for Israel and Palestine together, which is what you are spending on Iraq every four days, it would be not that much more than the estimated total of at least five billions Israel received last year, but in long run it would be much cheaper for the U.S.. Throw in some dozen billions for Syria and Lebanon, and you will wonder how unattractive it will be for the kids in the region to become Terrorists. The problem in distributing the money will be of course corruption, so make sure that a significant portion directly gets into the hands of the people. Just let everyone in the country pick up a cheque every month, for example. Now what to do about Iraq? Iraq is pretty fucked up. A rigid stop-loss strategy is the only expedient option left. The people in Iraq hate Americans, and this won’t change anytime soon, no matter what you do. I would split Iraq up in at least three parts and then drop the problem into the hands of the United Nations. Draw up new borders. Let China, Russia, Europe, Japan and the Arabs take care of it, and bring your soldiers and civilians home. A general amnesty for everyone could make a good start, and eventually the people in Iraq will get tired of killing each other after some time like the people did in Lebanon. Afghanistan is going to be hard in the long run, too. Probably splitting it up is also the best option. Let the Taliban also have a few provinces. Anyway, all these artificially drawn up borders will pose a problem for centuries, so split it up, let them fight it out, and let them reunite peacefully after some time like it happened in Europe. Finally, what to do with all those loose terrorists in the world who hate America and our decadent western way of life? Well, many of them will resort to other ways to reach their goals if they get a chance to do it, so finding out if there is a way to give them what they are fighting for is an option in some cases. Support the people who want to modernize Islam. Make it attractive for terrorists to refrain from terrorism. Grant terrorism dropouts immunity. Make hate speech a crime. And strengthen the United Nations so that any country not playing by the rules will not only be effectively isolated, but every leader who does not respect human rights will find himself in front of an international court. And all those terrorist who will still not lay down their weapons: Treat them like every other criminal who kills. And you should also reconsider your stance on death penalty. It should be only God who gives and takes life. If you claim the right to kill someone for whatever reason, others will claim the right, too. Human life must be sacred. I know, this must all sound to you like a left-wing fantasy, and turn you stomach upside down, but this planet has become a small one, and in the next decades weapons of mass destruction will be so easy to create, that we must not have a single place on this planet where the law and the human rights are meaningless. Only then mankind will be able to master all the scrutinies the universe has in stock for us. Sincerely A Concerned Human

Sicherheit durch dummes Geschätz? Nach dem Terrorplot von London und den Zugbomben in Deutschland wird allerorten der Ruf nach mehr Kontrollen laut: Gepäckdurchleuchtung auf Bahnhöfen, mehr Kameras, mehr Datenschnüffelei, Verbot von Wasser und Laptops in Flugzeugen und andere Grausamkeiten gegen Reisende werden derzeit als Mittel gegen den islamistische Selbstmordattentäter und sonstige Terroristen diskutiert. Allerdings tun sich die Sicherheitsrhetoriker der Unionsparteien vor allem mit völlig unpraktikablen Vorschlägen hervor, wie etwa CDU-”Innenexperte” Clemens Binninger, der Rail-Marshalls (aka bewaffnete Zugbegleiter) einführen will und offenbar noch nie was von der Bundespolizei gehört hat, die seit 1992 die Aufgaben der ehemaligen Bahnpolizei und der Transportpolizei der DDR wahrnimmt und auch für die Sicherheit auf Flughäfen zuständig ist. Einfach eine Milliarde für ein paar tausend zusätzliche Beamte, und schon sind die Züge sicher, dank Röntgenblick unserer neuen Super-BuPos. Blöd nur, wenn die Bombe gar nicht im Zug, sondern im LKW am Bahnübergang ist. Egal, dann stellen wir noch mal fünfhunderttausend Transportbegleiter beim Bundesamt für Güterverkehr ein, das sollte sich doch aus der Autobahnmaut finanzieren lassen - oder wie hat der Herr Innenexperte sich das vorgestellt? Komplett unrealistisch und damit wirkungsfrei ist der Vorschlag von Norbert Geis, der “die gleichen Sicherheitsmassnahmen in Zügen wie derzeit in Flugzeugen” fordert, was definitiv das Ende des Zugnahverkehrs bedeuten würde, denn wer würde noch S-Bahn fahren, wenn er eine halbe Stunde vor Abfahrt da sein müsste. Auf so ewas kann man wohl nur kommen, wenn man in Kleinkahl-Edelbach wohnt und in Berlin nur Limousine fährt. Unions-Fraktionsvize Wolfgang “Susanne-Osthoff-soll-zahlen” Bosbach wirft immerhin die zumindest nicht völlig unvernünftige Wiedereinführung der Kronzeugenregelung in die Diskussion, was wohl den Ausstieg aus einer terroristischen Vereinigung erleichtern soll. Die Effektivität bei Selbstmordattentätern und bei in sehr andersartigen Gesellschaften verankerten Menschen darf wohl bezweifelt werden, aber für einheimische politische Extremisten und Mafiosi kann es was bringen, und es ist vielleicht auch was für pakistanische Migrantenkinder, mit denen die Engländer offenbar Probleme haben. Allerdings ist die Wiedereinführung der Kronzeugenregelung eh im Koaltionsvertrag von 2005 vereinbart, insofern ist verdient diese Forderung das Prädikat “Grösstenteils Harmlos”. Ob nun Terror-Trittbrettfahrer mit politischem Kalkül oder hilflose Rechtspopulisten, es sind auch die hirnarmen Sensationsjournalisten, die den Schwachsinn verbreiten und die sich zu Komplizen der Terroristen machen, indem sie unter Ausblenden von Tatsachen auflagenfördernd Angst und Schrecken verbreiten, ohne aber die Sicherheit auch nur im geringsten zu erhöhen, sondern im Gegenteil Menschenleben vernichten, indem als Folge sehr viele Menschen Lebenszeit und Geld mit nutzlosen Pseudosicherheitsmassnahmen verschwenden. Sinnlose Passagierschikanen nach 9/11Nach den Flüssigsprengstoff-Terrorplanungen von London ist klar: die seit 9/11 verschärften Sicherheitsmassnahmen am Flughafen hättem niemanden daran hindern können, Flüssigsprengstoff an Bord eines Flugzeugs zu bringen, und die neuen Massnahmen können es vielleicht erschweren, was aber irrelevant ist, weil die Sicherheitsmassnahmen auch niemanden daran hindern, festen Sprengstoff an Bord zu bringen, sofern er nur ordentlich verarbeitet ist, etwa als Schuh, Baumwolljacket, Laptopbatterie, iPod oder Märchenbuch. Sie hindern auch niemanden daran, mit einer Boden-Luft Rakete ein startendes Flugzeug abzuschiessen, oder einen Flugkapitän daran, sich zu entscheiden, in ein Kernkraftwerk oder vollbesetztes Stadion zu fliegen, oder eine Privatmaschine gegen eine Boeing 747 im Landeanflug zu steuern. Und obwohl die Kontrollen am Flughafen keine Sicherheit gegen all die genannten Szenarien bieten, ist Fliegen immer noch sicherer als jede andere Art der Fortbewegung einschliesslich zu Fuss gehen. Fliegen ist mittlerweile einfach zu sicher. Das liegt wohl zum einen daran, dass bereits der Sturz aus relativ geringer Höhe für Menschen fatal ist und dadurch allein Höhe bereits Todesangst auslösen kann. Zum anderen war Fliegen früher zunächst nur etwas für vermögende Privatleute, Politiker und Geschäftsreisende, und somit war das Flugzeug als Verkehrsmittel der Elite besonders beliebtes Anschlags-ziel, und aus taktischen Gründen wie seiner Beweglichkeit und gut kontrollierbaren Zugänge beliebtes Ziel für Entführungen. Mittlerweile fliegen aber breite Bevölkerungsschichten, und die Entführungen vom 11. September 2001 haben die Schwelle für Flugzeugentführungen wesentlich erhöht: Arabisch sprechende Entführer müssen nun mit einem gewaltsamen Aufstand der Passagiere rechnen. Allerdings gibt es seit den sechziger Jahren pro Jahr 20-30 Flugzeugentführungen, und vor allem der Luftverkehr zwischen Cuba und den USA scheint regelmäßig gegen den Willen des Piloten zu erfolgen, auch nach 9/11/2001, seit den 1980er Jahren aber überwiegend von Cuba in die USA, während in den 60er und 70er Jahren vor allem Amerikaner Flugzeuge nach Cuba entführt haben. Flugzeuge stellen auch aufgrund ihrer vermeintlichen Fragilität sicher noch immer ein bevorzugtes Terrorziel dar, aber Nahverkehrszüge und Busse stehen dem nicht viel nach. Da sich beide nicht wirkungsvoll und mit vertretbarem Aufwand schützen lassen, stellt sich die Frage, warum eigentlich der Reisende im Luftverkehr derartigen Behinderungen und Belästigungen ausgesetzt wird, denn die Zahl von Flugzeugentführungen in den letzen 30 Jahren hat sich durch mehr Kontrollen nur unwesentlich verändert, allenfalls verlagert. Die Kosten der KontrollenDie Ärgernisse und Kosten wirkungsloser Sicherheitsmassnahmen wie Schlangestehen, Tasche auspacken, Hände vom Körper halten, Schuhe ausziehen, Gürtel umdrehen, Abtasten lassen und eventuell den ganzen Kram auspacken, das gibt es sonst nur im Gefängnis und am Flughafen. Nicht beim Militär, nicht beim Passieren des eisernen Vorhangs im kalten Krieg, ja nicht einmal, wenn man den Kanzler oder den Bundespräsidenten treffen will, wird man einer derart entwürdigenden Behandlung ausgesetzt. Der Verlust von Zeit, Geld und Lebensqualität durch die Kontrollen ist unverhältnismässig geworden. Bei rund 18 Mio. Starts pro Jahr werden pro Flug ca. 150 Passagiere befördert, dass sind 2,7 Mrd. Einsteigevorgänge pro Jahr. Könnte jeder dieser Einsteigevorgänge um 15 Min. verkürzt werden, wären das 675 Mio. Stunden nutzbarer Lebenszeit. Ein Mensch hat in seinem Leben rund 500.000 wache Stunden; die Sicherheitskontrollen kosten also jährlich allein die Zeit von weit über tausend Menschenleben, die Zeit des Sicherheitspersonals nicht mitgerechnet. Rechnet man noch Kosten von ca. $5 je Einsteigevorgang hinzu, sind mindestens 10 Mrd. Dollar verschwendet. Taxiert man nun zugebenermassen etwa zynisch, aber realistisch den Wert eines Menschenlebens (weisser Amerikaner aus der Mittelschicht) auf 10 Mio. Dollar (Lybien hat 2,7 Mrd. für die 270 Toten von Pan Am 103 gezahlt ), so kommt der Gegenwert weiterer 1000 Menschenleben hinzu. Vermutlich müssten Terroristen alle vierzehn Tage ein Flugzeug vom Himmel holen, um denselben Effekt zu erreichen, vorausgesetzt, die Menschen würden sich dadurch nicht davon abhalten lassen, einfach weiter zu fliegen, denn das Flugzeug bliebe auch dann noch das sicherste Verkehrsmittel. Die Kosten des Terrors Im Durchschnitt sind von 1968-2003 etwa 411 Menschen/Jahr Terroranschlägen zum Opfer gefallen, das ist etwa 1% der jährlichen Verkehrstoten in den USA, und allein in der Schweiz bringen sich jährlich dreimal so viele Menschen selbst um, wie weltweit dem Terror zum Opfer fallen. Allerdings sind Terroranschläge in einem Land Gift für Tourismus (-50%), ausländische Direktinvestitionen (-10 bis -15%), pro-Kopf Konsum (-5%), Investitionen (15-30%), Aktienmarkt (-10% Ertrag), Aussenhandel (-4%) und damit Volkseinkommen (-10%) und Wachstum. Andauernder Terror kann dadurch ein Land in seiner Entwicklung erheblich behindern, die Zahlen sind aus gut untersuchten Beispielen im Baskenland, in Griechenland und vor allem Israel, das ohne massive amerikanische Wirtschafts- und Militärhilfe wohl nicht lebensfähig wäre. Bekämpfung des Terrors: die PraxisDer viel größere Schaden entsteht also durch die psychologischen Effekte des Terrors, aber die sind umso grösser, je mehr Beachtung man dem Terror schenkt. Die effektivste Art, den Terror zu bekämpfen, wäre ihn einfach zu ignorieren. Leider ist das Gegenteil der Fall. Insbesondere die Massnahmen nach 9/11 sind an Absurdität kaum zu überbieten: Hunderttausende von Nagelscheren und Taschenmessern landeten im Müll, obwohl allen hätte klar sein müssen, das eine Wiederholung der Vorfälle vom 11. September ausgeschlossen ist, solange nicht mindestens die Hälfte der Passagiere Terroristen sind: anderenfalls wären Entführer nicht in der Lage, sich allzu lange zu behaupten, da die Passagiere davon ausgehen müssen, bereits eh tot zu sein und ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste gegen die Entführer vorgehen werden. Da vermutlich mehr als 99,99999% aller Fluggäste harmlose Reisende sind, wäre es nur konsequent, diese Reisenden in die Lage zu versetzen, sich besser gegen etwaige Entführer zur Wehr zu setzen, statt ihnen demnächst vielleicht noch ihre Kleidungsstücke wegzunehmen. In Deutschland besitzen rund 10% aller Haushalte legal eine Schusswaffe, und es gibt vermutlich zehn Millionen illegale Schusswaffen in Deutschland. Dennoch habe ich in meinem Leben noch keine Schiesserei im Zug oder in der Stadt beobachtet, trotz fehlender Metalldetektoren. Wozu also der Quatsch am Flughafen? Zumindest auf innereuropäischen Flügen ist es absolut überzogen, jeden Passagier zu kontrollieren; zur Durchsetzung eines Verbots von Waffen und gefährlichen Gegenständen reichen Stichproben völlig aus, so wie bei jeder vernünftigen Grenzkontrolle. Die heutigen Kontrollen an Flughäfen sind bereits strenger, als die Kontrollen bei der Überquerung des eisernen Vorhangs zu Hochzeiten des kalten Krieges je waren. Die Reisezeit auf innerdeutschen Flügen erhöht sich um bis zu 50%, weil Gepäck und Passagiere sicherheitsgeprüft werden. Warum nicht bei Non-Stop Flügen einfach mit Koffer zum Flieger, wie bei Zug oder Reisebus auch, und das Gepäck wird direkt verstaut? Fliegen so bequem und sicher wie Zugfahren: das wäre doch was. Das einzige, wozu die Kontrollen an Flughäfen führen, ist, das nunmehr grosse Bomben in Zügen platziert werden. Wo ist da der Sicherheitsgewinn für die Gesellschaft? Und wenn Züge kontrolliert würden, dann kommen die Bomben eben in Busse. Und wenn Busse kontrolliert werden, dann eben Volksfeste, Konzerte, Schulen, Wohnhäuser, Hotels, Campingplätze oder Arbeitsagenturen. Wohin der jetzige Weg führt, kann man an Israel sehen. Oder in Bagdad. Bekämpfung des Terrors: die TheorieWas also tun? Den Terror zu ignorieren wäre zwar vernünftig, aber Menschen sind bekanntermassen nicht vernünftig und wollen sehen, das etwas unternommen wird. Es wäre sicher gut, den Menschenrechten weltweite Achtung zu verschaffen, denn Terror speist sich vor allem aus Folter, gewaltsamer Unterdrückung, Rassismus und Gier. Leider gibt vor allem die Grossmacht USA weiterhin dem Terror reichlich Nahrung. Das muss aufhören. Allerdings würde es wohl mindestens fünfzig Jahre dauern, bis die Früchte davon spürbar würden, und das ist nicht nur viel länger als eine Legislaturperiode, sondern auch zu lang für die Wähler, und selbst dann wird Terror nicht völlig verschwinden, irgend eine extremistische Gruppe wird wohl immer unzufrieden mit dem Status Quo sein und eventuell zum Terror greifen. Es gibt einen interessanten sozialwissenschaftlichen Rationalansatz, der weitere Möglichkeiten aufzeigt, als Terrorismus stupide mit Drohungen, Sanktionen und den Einsatz von Polizei und Militär zu bekämpfen, wodurch im Endeffekt eine Gewaltspirale weiter genährt wird, solange man nicht bereit ist, konsequent Völkermord und ethnische Säuberung zu betreiben. Leider hat der Rationalansatz einige schwerwiegende Nachteile, etwa, dass man den Terroristen attraktive friedliche Möglichkeiten geben muss, ihre Ziele (Macht, Einfluss, Eigentum) zu erreichen, wozu in der Regel keine Bereitschaft besteht. Was zur Zeit abläuft, ist ein sogenanntes Deterrence-Preemption Spiel. Deterrence (Abschreckung) ist das Erschweren von Anschlägen durch Sicherheitskontrollen. Preemption (Zuvorkommen) ist das Ausschalten von Terroristen durch Angriffe auf ihre Basen und das Aufspüren, bevor sie zuschlagen. Jeder Staat kann hier unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte setzen. Die Terroristen können wiederum zwischen wenigen, spektakulären oder vielen “normalen” Anschlägen wählen. Die Terroristen in Israel setzen eher auf “normale” Anschläge, dies führt zu exzessiven Preemption-Massnahmen. In Europa hingegen setzen die Terroristen auf wenige spektakuläre Anschläge, die Preemption-Massnahmen ineffektiv und damit unzureichend machen und die Gefahr der Kompensation durch “Deterrence” nach sich ziehen, worunter alle Bürger zu leiden haben. Deterrence im Inland zieht als Externalisierungseffekt nach sich, dass Anschläge, auch auf Deutsche, ins Ausland verlagert werden. Deutschland verfügt von Hause aus offenbar aufgrund der ausgeprägten Bürokratie mit Personalausweisen, Meldepflicht und vielfältigem Genehmigungswesen bereits über ein hohes Deterrence-Potential im Vergleich zu vielen anderen Ländern. Was also folgt daraus? Noch mehr Abschreckung durch Kontrollen verringert die Häufigkeit “normaler” Anschläge in Deutschland und erhöht die Wahrscheinlichkeit weniger, spektakulärer Anschläge in Deutschland und die Häufigkeit normaler Anschläge wie etwa Entführungen im Ausland. Was tun? Wenn man sich nun partout dem Rationalansatz verweigert, wäre mehr Preemption die vernünftigere Strategie. In der Praxis bedeutet das mehr Resourcen für nachrichtendienstliche Aufklärung, Infiltration von Terrorgruppen und gute Beziehungen und Zusammenarbeit mit den Herkunftsländern. Die entscheidenden Hinweise auf die Identität der Bahnattentäter kamen wohl auch aus dem Libanon. Auf keinen Fall können wir aber mehr ziellose Repression gegen Millionen harmloser Bürger in Form verschärfter Kontrollen an Flughäfen und Bahnhöfen gebrauchen. Im Luftverkehr ist der Bogen bereits überspannt, und es wird höchste Zeit, das hier zurückgerudert wird. Kafkaeske NoFly-Listen und das Erschiessen geistig verwirrter Passagiere durch SkyMarshalls wie in den USA ist eine Form staatlichen Exzesses, der durch nichts zu rechtfertigen ist, auch nicht durch 9/11, und der am Ende den Nährboden für ganz neuen Terror aus der Mitte der Gesellschaft bilden wird, denn es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis die Instrumente, die jetzt zur Abwehr einer äußeren Gefahr eingeführt werden, gegen etwaige aufbegehrende Unterprivilegierte im eigenen Land zum Einsatz kommen. Die deutschen Regierungsparteien haben durch ihre Bestrebungen, das Mautsystem zu Überwachungszwecken zu missbrauchen, weitgehend an Glaubwürdigkeit verloren, und in den USA ist der Missbrauch von Anti-Terrorgesetzen gegen Bürgerrechtler leider längst kein Einzelfall mehr. Jeder einzelne und die vor allem Politik und Presse ist aufgerufen, auch dann einen kühlen Kopf zu bewahren, wenn der erste spektakuläre Anschlag in Deutschland Erfolg hat, was eigentlich nur noch eine Frage der Zeit ist, und sich anschliessend klug zu verhalten und erst einmal abzuwarten, statt der Versuchung zu erliegen, mit grossen Sprüchen grosse Dummheiten zu verbreiten und zu begehen.