In many ways the tide seems to be turning in South Korea. I saw at least three interesting articles in the Korea Times today. The first one says 'It was claimed that outgoing President Kim Dae-jung secretly gave $400 million to the impoverished country via the Hyundai business group before the inter-Korean summit meeting in June 2000', referring to North Korea. It wasn't so long ago that many people would have looked on that with favor. The second one says Kim also called for the nation to refrain from indulging in anti-Americanism, saying that people were blinded by 'sentimental nationalism' in calling for the withdrawal of United States troops stationed here'. According to the third one,
A leading security institute cited the need to employ a combination of economic and military containment policies against North Korea as a solution to the escalating nuclear crisis.

I've just been reading this new Arutz Sheva editorial calling Isreali Culture: The Last, Great Frontier. The main thrust is that religious Jews are not active enough in the media. Considering their role in the Isreali Knesset, I can't help suspecting this is voluntary on their part.

This editorial brought to mind several editorials from last week, such as Transfer - A Humane Solution, and Court Hands Terrorists Major Victory. Many editorials in this paper favor the idea that the Palestinians should all be removed from Isreal.

Remember how many Jews remained in Germany before world war II, when they were actively encouraging them to leave? Many had nowhere to go, and could not bring themselves to leave the only home they knew for somewhere speaking a different language where they had no job or friends. History shows that such a thing could not be done without massive killings.

I meant everything I wrote a coulple of days ago about suicide bombers who have been brainwashed into expecting paradise finding themselves in hell instead, but these people too are a bar to peace. Somehow they must be marginalized, since nobody sincerely proposes giving a Palestinian state the means to fight Isreal. There will never be peace until the Palestinians are convinced that a shift in electoral politics is not all that is required for any of them to be driven from their homes.

Could this be new hope for peace in the Middle East? According to this New York Times article, the Shinui Party is poised to become the third most powerful political party in Isreal. They are secularists, concerned about the power of the Orthodox Jews over the Isreali government.

"Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer."

Machiavelli's The Prince, chapter VII, at this Art of War site.

"The other and better course is to send colonies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new inhabitants; and those whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered, are never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured are easily kept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled."

ibid, Chapter 3

Machiavelli would not attribute the problem to the fact that there are settlements so much as the fact that the Palestinians know Jews who want to expand and create new settlements are part of the government.

I've been reading "In the Name of Osama Bin Laden" by Roland Jacquard. Thinking as I have been about emergent intelligences, one quote in particular struck me.

"He held no official post as military leader, ideologue, or religious leader, but his influence was real and profound. He demanded nothing, but there was always a fighter burning with the desire to give him satisfaction. He never gave precise instructions, but there was always a mujahed somewhere in the world to obey blindly what he believed to be an order, or even to anticipate his wishes. If we are to believe what he said or what we read in his statements and fatwas, Osama bin Laden never explicitly ordered an attack ... "

Imagine four main castes:

The Queen of the anthill : This is Osama himself, but although killing him would be worthwhile, many anthills can produce another queen when the old one dies. Although he provides some money, his main function is to publically praise terrorist attacks after the fact it appears. This could be done by someone else if he died. It is more than mere speech though, because it contributes to the belief of the next bunch of terrorists that they are on their way to paradise. Hell must be one heck of a shock for these guys.

The murderer (or warrior) caste: This is the potential pool of suicide assassins. Direct action against it has a very low chance of success, because it consists of all combat veterens who do not think "what a bunch of stupid thugs" when hearing about a suicide attack.

The drones: This is all the really poor and desperate millions who somehow believe a murderer can also be a martyr. Without the knowledge of these millions in the back round, the underlying knowledge of the hell prepared for them might leak into the consciousness of the would be suicidal killers and make them try to build a life instead of a pyre.

The really stupid drones: These are the rich people who give money more or less knowingly to terrorists and affiliates. Many of them live in countries which Al Qaeda has stated it plans to overthrow, and would lose a great deal of protection and privilege, including perhaps their own wealth. The psychology of the guilt and hypocrisy which contribute to this, and the sheltered easy lifestyle which inhibits the survival instincts are an essay in themselves.

Superficially, the main flaw in this vehicle is lack of brakes. We all know it would be useless to give in even if we wanted to, because there is nobody to give in to. If Osama stopped preaching violence, the people who gain false hope from it would soon find another leader. Thus, it can never bring prosperity to Muslims, but only death to their enemies and retribution to those with homes and jobs and families who can't hide as well as they. I hope that this weapon is not as formidable as it appears, and will be destroyable by conventional means. The only sure fire weapons I can think of against them would be almost pyrric, striking at the roots of our own civilization.

I have always had reservations about some of the things Isreal has done, but think of all the things they haven't done that Arab leaders have done to their own people. The point is not to justify Sharon, but to realize that an enemy who will fight unless (unlike them) we are always perfectly fair is implacable.

Good for Newsday's Ed Lowe - in Admitting the Naked Truth he devotes an entire column to a single retraction. I can appreciate an honest mea culpa with no attempt to be inconspicuous.

I read a James Pinkerton column in Newsday today. I'm skeptical about what's going to happen if we occupy Iraq as well, but I hope I'm wrong, because it seems like it will be done. Pinkerton alludes to the difference in spirit between today and the great wars where rich politically well connected men served with honor in the military. He mentions Theodore Roosevelt in 1898, but not George Bush senior in world war II.

Still, he's gotten me back to thinking about the long term prospects of the occupation following the next war. While a war in North Korea would be much more bloody than the invasion of Iraq, it's by no means clear that the building of a democratic government afterwards will be easier in Iraq. After all, look at the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. Two halves of what had formerly been a unified country reunited - as a democracy. The cost was huge, but it was mostly paid by the West Germans. Of course Germany had had some experience as an independent democracy prior to division, in addition to the West German experience parallel to South Korean democracy.

I'm not really suggesting we should after all fight North Korea, just trying to build a base for thinking about the formidable task George W. Bush proposes - rebuilding Iraq as a democracy. Let us not give up hope of it - especially not those of us who don't believe we should put ourselves in a position where we must succeed or suffer serious consequences. Instead, let us use our privileged position. The president and his strongest supporters may feel obliged to gloss over some of the difficulties lest they sap our will to undertake a duty they believe in so strongly. Those of us who feel otherwise may freely and openly consider the difficulties, pleased either to deter the unprepared or to improve the chances of a true triumph of democracy.

If we look at the great twentieth century triumphs of peaceful democracy such as Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and South Korea, we will see they had several things in common. Although some of them were only part of a former whole, none of them were riven internally by serious and constant ethnic strife - at least not to the extent of civil war. All of them had some outside aid in building a prosperous economy, and nobody was looking for a large short or medium term profit or reparation they were willing and able to use force to insist on (one of the reasons the Weimar republic failed).

Iraq is divided between the currently dominant Sunni moslems, the majority Shia who would dominate a pure democracy, and the Kurds who are persecuted by both. A Republic has safeguards so that the majority cannot cook and eat the minority even if the vote to do so is honest. No minority can tolerate a pure democracy when there is a majority who would like to cook and eat them. Yet Iraq has no history as a republic, no history of a government of laws rather than men. In his better moments, Machivelli speaks of how a republic can be created where there is no tradition of it - he considers it the most praiseworthy and difficult achievement of politics. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just want to hear how he plans to do it. I would do my best to help, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around doing it in 18 months at a profit. He has openly acknowledged there are no serious potential leaders among the dissident groups we deal with. Let's assume Saddam doesn't manage to trash all his oil fields on his way out. I want to hear about the constitution of this democracy.

After world war II, we were willing to endure taxes at wartime levels to help rebuild Japan and West Germany. During the cold war, we were not proportionately as generous to South Korea and Taiwan, yet we helped them, partly by shouldering some of their defensive burden. West Germany subsidized East German rebuilding. I cannot think of any case in history where a new democracy turned a profit for it's sponsors in 18 months. Yes I know - oil. Pinkerton quotes a Wall Street Journal article proposing we should pull Iraq out of OPEC and flood the market with their oil. If we still assume Saddam doesn't manage to devastate Iraqi oil fields on the way out, this might produce a short term profit. How it will affect our simultaneous attempts to build a democracy I don't know. I'm not sure how either the Saudi government or the Saudi people would respond either.

I just finished rereading Emergence by Steven Johnson. It's partly about how unintelligent things like ants and neurons can form things like ant colonies and brains which display greater intelligence. I say partly because it's also about how people can form things like cities with lives of their own and meaningful patterns which people form without thinking about it - although the people are probably more intelligent than the city itself.

The book was written before blogging was as big as it is now. One of the questions the author addresses is if the web could lead to the formation of a kind of distributed intelligence or global brain. He answers no, because the links are one way without feedback. He proposes a partial solution to this, the use of Alexa.

The ants and cells in his book form greater collective intelligences by the use of simple local rules. If anyone ever tries to formulate a similar set of rules by which bloggers could form themselves into a collective intelligence greater than the individuals composing it, I would suggest the following three part rule for a start. With thanks to Steven Johnson - which doesn't imply that he agrees with the idea below. As far as I know he's never read it.

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The Easy Rule, so called because because most serious bloggers tend to do at least some of these things anyway.

A. Download the Alexa toolbar, or at least use the Alexa site. Read the privacy policy carefully.

B. Use a blogger statistics package (like the one near the bottom of my sidebar) which shows which sites refer people to your blog. Visit the sites, think about what the fact that these people like your site says about it. Think about linking to some of them. Consider the existence of these links and the number of people who click through as feedback. These are a big part of your audience.

C. If you think someone might be interested in your blog, link to them and click through your own link if you don't know if anyone else will. The odds are they use some statistics package that will tell them, whether they have a button on their page or not. Your own links are not only suggestions to your visitors, but feedback to the site owners - and links to your site.

Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come back again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

Sun Tsu's The Art of War, edition by James Clavell

Sometimes spinning a globe can be a little depressing. Look how many of the countries are repressive dictatorships. Look how many are democracies without human rights or the rule of law, where an ethnic group which is 60 percent of the population ruthlessly oppresses another group which only makes up 40 percent - the tyrany of the majority. Look how many democracies exist at the whim of a military the civilian government does not actually control. Look how many democracies are in danger of willingly electing a religious dictatorship and making it their last election. Look how many avoid all this, yet have failed to create prosperity for their people and may someday fall into one of the traps above.

I mention all this because it reminds me how precious South Korea is. Think of the attitudes of different groups of Americans towards the Soviet Union in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, just before the Soviet Union fell, and some time after. Large swings of public mood and opinion from decade to decade in a democracy are not uncommon. Remember Sun Tsu, and also remember American interests. A defeat for a democracy allied to us for so long would be a massive blow to American prestige. After a war, I do not think the resulting country would be a force for peace and democracy - or even a prosperous country with no need to blackmail the world with nukes. So not only is it worth fighting to help them defend themselves, it is also worth trying to learn why their feelings toward us are sometimes not what we would expect considering that we give them military aid and they don't give it to us.

I was just reading this editorial Anti-Americanism and Anti -Koreanism in the English language edition of the Korea Times. The author talks about how there was a time when most Koreans felt positive about almost everything to do with America. Perhaps the largest part of the column is about American soldiers in South Korea, who are after all the only Americans many Koreans will ever meet.

"When there was a draft in United States, many college-educated soldiers came to Korea, and they were not only soldiers but many were students who want to learn something about Korea while they were here. And as educated men, they were sensitive about Koreans and their pride, and their feelings."

Even when not talking about Americans soldiers the problem is similar - a feeling of lack of knowledge of and respect for Koreans. Many Americans may find it exasperating that South Koreans should worry about this when they are in immanent danger from North Korea and want much of the aid that they hope will pacify them to come from us, but in view of the many and frequent changes in public opinion everywhere we've been talking about, I think we should try to do it anyway. Feelings can change.

Here's a picture Seoul Daily, a South Korean newspaper, got from WorldNews.com. This picture is of South Koreans burning a North Korean flag with a picture of Dear Leader on it. For Americans it's hard not to think 'About time!'. The accompanying article is about North Korea's talk of firing test missiles which may have set off the demonstration, not the demonstration itself.

One of the three online newspapers written in North Korea is in English, and I visited the web site of The People's Korea. Sometimes you can learn something from the untruths someone chooses to tell. What I learned this time is chiefly that The People's Korea has nine articles on it's current web site, with dates between December 14th and January 10th. Unless they keep some articles while deleting others, they publish much less than one article a day. It doesn't seem to be a weekly publication, four articles were published on December 14th, four more eleven days later, and one on January tenth.

Not much you haven't seen in Western papers and on television. I don't happen to have read the article about world war two reparations for Koreans, but I'll bet if I followed the English language Japanese press more closely I'd know more than the author of the article tells us.