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Dear Roger

Thank you for your interesting interview with Emmanuel Todd.  I think his reasoning is very sound. I really hope (probably in vain) that most people in the USA could read it.

After 11/9 USA had all the sympathies of the European states. Exchange of intelligence led to concrete results.  Yet what Bush started after that was definitely not leading to a “safer world”.  The US interest in Iraq has nothing to do with self-defence or democracy but with the US defined need to be able to control oil resources in the Middle East. The Bush Administration has wasted all its good-will capital in Western Europe.  The only way to stop the US-Europe split is a change in US foreign policy.   US foreign policy should be led from outside the CIA. Bush should absolutely not be allowed a second presidential term.  Rather he should be put on trial for having started an illegal war - after lying to the US-people. Please note that some Republicans wanted to get rid of Bill Clinton because of his sex life!!  This is hypocrisy at its best. 

The Arabic nations must bear great hatred in their hearts, for US foreign policy. US policy clearly does not respect the Arabic nations, and the Americans exercise their influence through the Israelis.  I recognize that Israel is a democracy and most Arabic countries are not.  However the US support for Israel against the Arabic countries is so close that the US and Israel are seen as the same power. A change in US foreign policy is the first step needed, to calm down the terrorism. 

The present “Bush Doctrine” - allowing pre-emptive wars against potential enemies - means that really any nation could attack any nation under virtually any pretext.  USA feels so powerful that it anyway is not afraid of any such attack.  But for the rest of the world this Doctrine means insecurity.  Let us then see how reasonable the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq are.  The 9/11 attack did cost some 3000 lives. To see the magnitude from my own horizon, which is Finland, it equates to the loss of 53 lives,  somewhat more than a disastrous bus accident.  Was it really worth the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, which have already  cost tens of thousands of civilian lives?  In Afghansitan, was the intelligence around OBL so poor that a massive bombing was the only possibility?  And what was even worse: the mightiest country on earth could not even find this one man despite a lot of civilian deaths. The intelligence about Iraq’s WMD’s does not seem to be much better. 

Over the years USA has interfered in most South American countries’ politics, whether there have been democratic elections or not. They have always preferred dictators eating from their hand to democratic leaders that tried to change the economic situation for the large poor populations.  The CIA has used as many dirty tricks as the KGB.

This is the truth - yet the US Congress has always been fooled and learnt the facts only later. In the Soviet Union the KGB men always had the last word – and Putin is, as you know, an old KGB man.  Look back at US history, and you will find very close links also there.  Bush Senior was, as you also know, CIA boss before he was President. Many times the pretext for US invasions has been the safety of US citizens in that country. Well, maybe some countries should have been more restrictive – and not let in US citizens in the first place. 

The route to a better world with less violence starts as Professor Todd says with education.  Let all countries have their own pace of development, without too much interference from the outside. We cannot go into a foreign country and dictate how their political system should be run. We have just to look back in our own history to learn that we in the passed did not have political systems agreeable with the present. 

Christer Nikander 

Finland

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The Court of Appeal gave an important ruling this week, in defence of abdroids (or "companies").  They held, in the Geologistics case, that in administering its compensation scheme for rescuing the clients of failed insurance companies, the industry was not entitled to withhold compensation from abdroids where they were ready to grant it to natural persons in comparable circumstances.  This case is a cautionary tale in the workings of the "Third Way State".

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme is not what it seems.  It sounds like an official state body, but it is not.  It is one of a raft of ambiguous institutions set up by private companies in a rearguard attempt to stop the State regulating their affairs effectively.  Thatcher and Major loved them, and Labour has sadly continued with the same affair.  The theory always is that the "industry" should be given the chance to put its house in order, under the mere threat of some future State intervention - these posturing PR-creations are to be found everywhere.

In this case, the FSCS decided that, in assessing the claims for compensation arising out of the collapse of the insolvent insurer Independent Insurance, they should pay out 90% of personal claims in full, but refuse to pay any claims submitted by companies.  One small company, Geologisitics Limited, had the courage to challenge this arbitrary behaviour - and this week won for the second time, having won in the High Court earlier in the year.  Arbitrary discrimination of that kind was simply not acceptable, said the Court of Appeal.

Pause with me for a moment, and think
of the importance of this judgment.

• Watch out for the next cock-up.