“It is a shadow underneath everything” (Robert Jay Lifton, in ''The Planet'')

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people." (Barack Obama, in his Nobel Speech)

"Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms." (Obama, in the Nobel Speech)

"He reserves the right to act unilaterally, to intervene militarily, to make exceptions, to lead the world. Multilateralism when we can, Bill Clinton declared, unilateralism when we must: This, too, is the Obama doctrine. There is some wiggle room as we saw in his speeches in Cairo and Prague. But, as the brilliant style and problematic content of his Nobel speech demonstrated, he remains an exceptional politician working in an exceptionalist tradition. " (John Feffer on Obama, in World Beat)

A thin layer of snow covers the newly formed ice on the little bay of the Gulf of Finland. As the weather grows colder and the days become shorter (although the snow already gives more light), I meditate on the saying: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul. τί γὰρ ὠφελεῖ ἄνθρωπον κερδῆσαι τὸν κόσμον ὅλον καὶ ζημιωθῆναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ.

Underneath everything President Obama does and says is a shadow. The shadow is cast by the damage done to his psyche. Some people believe that the Norwegian newspaper just spread another urban legend when it published an article on the nuclear briefcase, which the President's aide brought to Oslo. But no, the world is really all that is the case. At the climate conference in Copenhagen, somebody should tell the President that he carries a global warmer in his luggage.

Multilateralism is fine, like in multilateral nuclear disarmament. Unilateral nuclear disarmament would also be very OK, to start with.