Aug. 12-Neither the government nor the state has any end other than to dedicate itself to the general welfare-as astonishing as this idea may seem in many countries today. The metric for judging a government is the wellbeing and happiness of the citizens. In this respect the result of a study by the market research and consulting firm Ipsos is instructive: 87% of the Chinese (aged 16 to 64) who were polled believe that their country is headed in the right direction, while only 42% of the same age group in Germany is of this opinion. To underscore the same point, in China only 13% of the people are pessimistic in that regard, while 58% in Germany are. In the United States only 43% are optimistic, but that is considerably more than a year ago under the Obama administration. This is not a new subject. As early as 1338-1339, Ambrogio Lorenzetti created a fresco on the effects of good and bad government on the walls of the Council Room (Hall of the Nine) in Siena, Italy. The characteristics of the former are presented in several images: fruitful fields, flourishing trade, relaxed people, and peace; the characteristics of the latter are immortalized in an image as well: tyranny and the dominance of such vices as greed, arrogance, vanity, cruelty, treason, deception, rage, strife, and war. Justice lies in chains on the ground; the people suffer. To begin with bad government: In an interview with the American blog Consortium News, Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004-who quit in protest against the then illegal renditions by the CIA in Uzbekistan-shed light on one aspect of Anglo-American policy under Tony Blair and George W. Bush, to which the "community of western values" apparently had no objection. He described how, in his judgment, the testimony of 99% of the people in CIA internment camps in Uzbekistan, who were forced under torture to admit they belonged to al-Qaeda, was worthless. He said that the goal of these operations was to exaggerate the al-Qaeda threat, in order to have an excuse for wars of intervention, as well as for restrictions on human rights in the United States itself. In fact, the famous "whistleblower" of the 17th Century, Friedrich von Spee, in numerous writings, exposed that confessions made under torture are worthless. And how should one assess the fact that the Washington newspaper and website The Hill simply quotes a CNN interview with the former deputy FBI Director under Robert Mueller, Phil Mudd, that the U.S. government will kill President Trump, because he has set the professionals of the CIA and the State Department against him by defending Putin? No criticism, no outrage-it was just as if the weatherman had forecast rain for tomorrow. Robert Mueller is currently the special prosecutor on Trump's alleged collusion with Russia, and has already empanelled a grand jury, which is supposed to provide the evidence to lead to President Trump's impeachment. It will be interesting to see whether Phil Mudd's announcement will result in an appropriate investigation for having been a signal and a threat against the President by the same intelligence apparat involved in the ongoing coup against the President.