2.

Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, senior military sources warned last night / Sunday Times 17 August, 2008.

Just who really does control what are called "Russian" nuclear weapons, Wayne Hall asked. Wayne's concern is well-grounded. However, we should never fall for the illusion that Western governments, or the Chinese, Israeli, Indian and Pakistani governments, maintain full control of theirs. If the governments of the belligerent Nation-States and the leaders of their military blocs would really control the world, including the annihilation systems they have ordered, then we would perhaps have a lasting nuclear peace. But we would not have freedom, because the control would have to be total.

F. William Engdahl's analysis from July about President Medvedev's proposals, and his comments on the Georgian-Russian war for the internet-based Real News Network, are excellent. Except that I doubt that the political problem of the nuclear age can be solved by means of traditional, intergovernmental, diplomacy.

Nuclear disarmament equals a democratic revolution, because it changes the relations of force in favor of the peoples. It requires that the peoples turn their backs on their governments and conspire together to replace the system of nation-states and military blocs with a non-militant system of world governance.

Around 1930, H.G Wells, who already saw that the nuclear age was coming, called this non-governmental perspective The Open Conspiracy .

In some respects the conditions for a successful Open Conspiracy are more favorable today than at the time of Wells. The internet, in particular, gives a new point of departure for political thought and political praxis. With the internet, it may be possible, for the first time, to create a common human understanding ("an information"), which is not controlled and manipulated by Nationalist and military-industrial interests, or religious fanatics. Thus it may be possible to add a new dimension to the old Montesquieuan idea of a human liberty, based on the separation of state powers.

The public library without walls can become an Informational Power, which completes the constitutional triad of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Powers of the modern Nation-States. The internet has indeed already begun to function like a cosmopolitan Informational Power. This is why we call it 'cyberspace', which means self-government. It is a kind of government, which "like scientific process, will be conducted by statement, criticism, and publication that will be capable of efficient translation" (Wells, H.G.: The Open Conspiracy. H.G. Wells on World Revolution. Edited and with a Critical Introduction by W. Warren Wagar. Praeger 2002, p. 70-71).

The traditional newspapers, radio stations and television channels, tend to serve serve only one party, one nation and one military bloc. They tend to create an atmosphere of war. The way the mass media handle the recent Georgian-Russian war is yet one example of this tendency of the mainstream press.

Public libraries and the internet, on the other hand, tend to serve the peoples and to create an atmosphere of peace.