The whole point is the effect of what Weiner did on the House of Representatives and on the country as a whole

…among liberal commentators and millions of other Americans, there is a great deal of flawed thinking about whether [Anthony] Weiner should resign

writes Dennis Prager who points out that "Most Americans understand that Congress, like every other institution, including their local church and synagogue, is composed of sinners."

The two most common arguments offered against his resigning have been that (1) what Weiner did was not illegal and (2) it was not even as bad as an extramarital affair because he never met, let alone had physical contact with, any of the women to whom he sent naked and semi-naked photos of himself.

The argument's entirely beside the point.

The point — the whole point — is the effect of what he did on the United States House of Representatives and on the country as a whole, especially young people.

There is a simple way to prove this. Let us imagine that some congressman had walked onto the House floor in his underwear. I think it is fair to assume that just about every Democrat and Republican in the country would demand his resignation. But why? That action is not illegal, and it certainly does not constitute a form of infidelity to his wife.

The reason people would demand his resignation is that such behavior disgraced the House of Representatives.

That is the issue here. When a member of Congress sends pictures of his penis to women around the country, he has demeaned Congress.

And he has done so far more than any member of Congress whose extramarital affair was publicly disclosed.

…I cannot think of a single event that symbolizes the decline of American society — and especially of its liberal elite — as much as Weiner's actions and his retention of his seat in Congress.

For One African Leader: 7 Ferraris, 4 Mercedes-Benzes, 5 Bentleys, 4 Rolls-Royces, 2 Bugattis, 1 Aston Martin, 1 Porsche, 1 Lamborghini, & 1 Maserati

Africa's "Ill-Gotten Gains" Are Embarrassing France, writes Le Monde on its front page, as it emerges that a Paris investigation into the matter has been at least partly squelched. As Philippe Bernard explains,

Threats to the ongoing judicial investigation on their alleged "ill-gotten gains" acquired in France have not tempered their taste for luxury. The stockpiling of luxuries and swanky cars, by three African presidents mentioned in the 2008 complaint filed in Paris by the organization Transparency International France (TIF) for "concealment of embezzled public funds", has continued unabated, as if they felt untouchable.

Revealed by documents which Le Monde has seen, the list of recent acquisitions by the Bongo (Gabon), the Sassou Nguesso (Congo), and the Obiang (Equatorial Guinea) families makes the head spin. These lavish purchases take on a new political dimension in the context of the Arab revolutions where the dictators' personal enrichment fueled popular anger.

Police officers from the Office central pour la répression de la grande délinquance financière (OCRGDF), instructed by investigating Paris judges Roger Le Loire and René Grouman, thus established that Ali Bongo, son of the late Omar Bongo, acquired a Bentley in France in 2009, a few months before being elected President of Gabon, following the death of his father in June of that year. The police say that the choice of Mr. Bongo, current head of a state with 20% of the population living on less than $2 a day, fell on a Continental Flying Speed model. The 2.5 ton car, capable of reaching 322 km/h, costs over 200,000 Euros.

The family of Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of Congo-Brazzaville, is far from lagging behind: while in France in early 2010, his wife Antoinette acquired an E-class Mercedes registered in the name of the Diplomatic Corps. As for Wilfrid Nguesso, the nephew of the head of state and boss of the Congolese shipping company responsible to Brazzaville for collecting taxes from tankers of Congolese oil, he set his sights in October 2009 on a Porsche Panamera turbo (priced at 137,000 Euros).

But the most stupefying find of the police concerns Teodoro Nguema Obiang, 41, son and near-namesake Teodoro Obiang Nguema, 69, who has reigned over Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist since 1979, and who happens to be the current president of the African Union (AU). Customs investigators have established that in November 2009, "26 luxury cars and six motorcycles […] for a value of almost $12 million were shipped to Marne's Vatry airport from the United States [by Teodoro Obiang Nguema] for re-export to Equatorial Guinea."

The lot included 7 Ferraris, 4 Mercedes-Benzes, 5 Bentleys, 4 Rolls-Royces, 2 Bugattis, 1 Aston Martin, 1 Porsche, 1 Lamborghini, and 1 Maserati. … The tastes of Obiang Junior are not confined to luxury cars. A Tracfin (the government's anti-money laundering unit) alert, dated March 7, 2011, reports that the Malabo dictator's son "purchased 109 lots for a total of 18,347,952.30 euros" [during] the sale of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé [shareholder of Le Monde] collection" in February 2009 organized by Christie's France. The endless inventory of antiques acquired is breathtaking: from the 17th-century "scarlet bull" costing 298,604 Euros to the 112,724-Euro "coconut cup", through the 744,716-Euro "bronze Hermaphrodite figure".

…The quite logical conclusion of the Tracfin investigators reads thusly: "Given the positions that the person concerned holds in Equatorial Guinea and the particularity of charging his purchases of works of art to the Somagui company [of which he is director], the presence of 'ill-gotten gains' could be suspected." Mr. Obiang's need for so many works of art becomes clear when you discover that he has no fewer than six homes, including one in Malibu (California), one in Ville d'Avray (Yvelines), and another on Avenue Foch (Paris). According to a witness quoted by Sherpa, a group of lawyers leading the case, his Paris abode extends over four levels and includes several dozen rooms, including "a dining room in coral and a Turquerie with Lalique panels."

Aussi dans Le Monde :

• Biens mal acquis : deux magistrats instructeurs désignés (AFP)

• Biens mal acquis : une enquête vise le président du Cameroun (AFP)

• L'arrêt sur les biens mal acquis ouvre des perspectives pour les ONG anticorruption (Philippe Bernard)

• Biens mal acquis : l'enquête empêchée (Éditorial dans Le Monde)

Bitter, Party of One!

Many Europeans, just like fantasy-“revolutionary” Jack-in-the-Box Juan Cole, are reacting as expected the warning-laden message in Robert Gates’ recent speech on the failure of most of the EU’s member states in the arena of supporting their defense.

Shorter SecDef Robert Gates: European members of NATO need to bankrupt themselves with military spending and wars just as the United States has done, or else the US Congress will stop being willing to support NATO's war efforts.

In these nation-states where governments typically and chillingly represent more than half of all GDP, eclipsing the capacity of civil society to work hard enough to sustain the elephant compelling them to give them a piggy-back ride, spending 2 percent of their GDP on their own security and stability is “bankrupting them”. Somehow asking them to commit 2% to receive the benefit of what is likely the effect of an 8-10% commitment is too much.

One-time Fulbright scholar and nominally pro-NATO blogger Joerg Wolf (whose position is to discuss and theoretically to promote the interest of Germany in NATO) repeats Cole’s emotional tone, resorting to citing moronic adolescent taunts typically heard at a “peace” rally:

Let's talk truth to the NYT: Europe seized the opportunity of the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, while America's elite of neocons and liberal interventionists have turned "Perpetual War" into US ideology as James Joyner argues.

If the result of this passive-aggressive tone, and the desire to smother criticism is to be assumed to be anything, it is an attempt to have the US continue its’ “perpetual war” stance just enough to relieve the burden of Europeans having to protect the Smurf village that they conceive of their lands to be.

Don’t forget that these are the people who have tried to mask their never-ending and useless invective direct at the US as “the concern and advice of an older brother”. How do they understand one statement of objective criticism every five years or so? Exactly as you see it. Many of their public intellectuals still mad that about one minor statement about “Freedom Fires” a decade ago, and that a Hollywood script writer once fashioned a character called Hans Gruber in 1988.

As to the message “responding” to Gates’ warning? Okay. We get it. Gates doesn't have to make his point again.

The European critics of his measured warning just did it for him.

Compare with Bin Laden's Death at the Hands of the U.S.: When a Cuban Dissident Is Killed by Havana, Only a Couple of French Readers Bother Reacting

While a Cuban dissident dies in the custody of the Santa Clara police, excitement is the order of the day as the AFP recounts in Le Monde that Che Guevara's unpublished journals from his guerrilla years in the Sierra Maestra are to see the light of day…

Le journal d'Ernesto Che Guevara, écrit pendant la campagne dans la Sierra Maestra, avant la révolution cubaine de 1959, devait être publié pour la première fois mardi 14 juin à Cuba, ont annoncé lundi les éditeurs. Le Journal d'un combattant recueille, selon la quatrième de couverture, "des moments uniques de la lutte armée à Cuba, depuis l'arrivée du yacht Granma" le 2 décembre 1956 sur la côte avec 82 révolutionnaires à bord, jusqu'au triomphe de la révolution dirigée par Fidel Castro.

"Le témoignage humain de grande valeur qui ressort de sa lecture permet d'approcher les perceptions du Che sur la réalité de l'île, sa culture, son identité et le contexte politique", ajoute le texte de présentation du livre édité par la maison australienne Ocean Press-Ocean Sur. Cette dernière a travaillé main dans la main avec le Centre d'études Che Guevara dirigé par la veuve du guérillero, Aleida March.

To return to the article Un dissident cubain meurt sous les coups de la police: noting that there are only a handful of reactions to Juan Wilfredo Soto's death in the article's comments section, one Le Monde reader points out the double standard, comparing the reactions to the Cuban's death with those to a hypothetical case of a similar nature in the United States and with those to a real killing five or six weeks ago that nailed America's public enemy nr 1:

2 réactions ! C'est tout ! Changer de titre. " Un contestataire américains...police" : minimum 50 réactions scandalisées. "Ben Laden est tué par des militaires" : 90 réactions scandalisés ! Les citoyens français sont des défenseurs des droits de l'homme, mais il y a les petites préférences et les petites obsessions ; il y a homme et homme.

A couple of reactions! Is that all?! Try changing the title: "An American Protestor Dies Because of Police Brutality" — there would be at least 50 incensed comments. "Bin Laden Killed by Soldiers": 90 comments voicing outrage! French citizens are defenders of human rights, but they have small preferences and small obsessions; there are humans and then there are humans.

Highly Recommended

David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge
(On the Dismantling of American Culture)

The European Members in NATO should just “Declare Victory and Go Home”

In a policy speech given in Brussels, outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took umbrage with NATO’s European members’ dismal non-participation in an alliance that they insist on remaining members of.

The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops based in Europe, not to stand guard against invasion but to train with European forces and promote what for decades has been lacking: the ability of the Europeans to go to war alongside the U.S. in a coherent way.

The war in Afghanistan, which is being conducted under NATO auspices, is a prime example of U.S. frustration at European inability to provide the required resources.

"Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military, NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more," Gates said.

Call it “tough love” if you like, but to be it looks more like a warning that much of Europe’s parasitism is going to have to come to an end if they don’t want to lose American support altogether.

The question is simple: do you want to put in half a loaf and get some? Or will you rationalize some more nonsense about not needing NATO to function as Europe’s continental defense and deterrent and get nothing from the US?

It’s a simple, simple question.

To illustrate his concerns about Europe's lack of appetite for defense, Gates noted the difficulty NATO has encountered in carrying out an air campaign in Libya.

"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference," he said.

And when it comes to dealing with a third rate thug with aging Soviet and Russian equipment, most of Europe’s over-downsized armed services remain flummoxed.

"While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission," he said. "Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."

"A victory for biodiversity in Europe”: EU Court Backs French Hamsters

The wheels of justice have spun in favour of the Great Alsatian Hamster,

reports the Wall Street Journal's John W. Miller from Brussels,

as the European Court of Justice, in one of 11 decisions released on Thursday, ruled that France needs to do more to protect the little golden critter.

(Merci à Damien, whose e-Nough carries the whole backstory and who, indeed, has been reporting on the situation for three (!) years…)

Enjoy that Amish Future of Yours’, Deutschland!

Germany’s phasing out of nuclear power generation will make them more vulnerable that they already are to manipulation by commodity producers such as Russia.

As Steve LeVine recently pointed out in Foreign Policy, “Germany—already reliant on Russia’s Gazprom for 30 percent of its natural gas—will be buying much more gas in order to compensate for the loss of nuclear power, which provides 28 percent of Germany’s electricity.” Of course, maybe the Germans will rely more on coal or hydraulic fracturing instead—surely the Greens would have no objection, right?

It’s interesting, because you would think a nation where half of the politically-active students and the foam-at-the-mouth activist types who seem so fond of rattling on about the US being Saudi Arabia’s lapdog don’t seem to register much concern for their own bogeymen: Gazprom and “big solar”.

Meanwhile, Merkel’s conservative critics—those in the media and in the business sector—are already scoffing. They talk of impending blackouts. Some nuclear energy companies are threatening to sue for damages in the billions. According to Die Welt (translation by Der Spiegel), “The nuclear phaseout marks a creeping rejection of the economic model which has transformed Germany into one of the richest countries in the world in recent decades. .  .  . What will the new energy age cost us Germans in terms of money and jobs?”

What about all of those “green jobs” making windmills and the need for masses of manual labor after power outages force de-mechanization?

I mean, do the proponents of this trash REALLY hate the blue-collar working class THAT MUCH that they would lie to them, and themselves about “green economy” lunacy? Have they forgotten that it was just a talking point to deflect anyone who disagreed on reasonable economic terms?

Droit du Dirty Old Man

SINCE … Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested on sexual assault charges in New York, French politicians have been loudly expressing their horror at his “violent” treatment at the hands of America’s criminal justice system

writes Stephen Clarke, the author of 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, while Martine Laronche tackles le mur du silence in Le Monde.

France may think it had a revolution, but in fact it just got a new, and even more powerful, elite. They believe themselves so indispensable to the running of the country that trying to topple one of them is a bit like threatening to shoot a prize racehorse for nibbling your lawn. You’re meant to shut up and let them nibble.

This is why the French establishment sees Mr. Strauss-Kahn — rather than the traumatized chambermaid the police say he attacked — as the victim. The same case would never have come out in the open in Paris. The woman would have been quietly asked whether she thought it was worth risking her job and her residence permit. She would have been reminded that it was her word against his, and frankly, whom would people believe? The witty, famous man with the influential friends, or the nobody?

French politicians are known to be serial seducers, and as a rule no one bothers them about it. …

… The most telling parallel with the Strauss-Kahn case is that of Roman Polanski. Whatever his talents as a filmmaker, he fled the United States to France in 1978 to avoid being sentenced for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. When he was arrested in Switzerland in 2009, at the request of the American authorities, the whole of the French cultural establishment rose up to defend him.

At this year’s Césars ceremony (the French equivalent of the Oscars), Mr. Polanski received an award for “The Ghost Writer,” which, to quote France’s most respected newspaper, Le Monde, “marked his return to the family after his legal troubles.” They made it sound like a speeding ticket.

All of which leads me to my belief that even if Dominique Strauss-Kahn is convicted and has to serve time, he will someday return to France, publish his autobiography (which will, of course, be adapted for the big screen by Mr. Polanski) and eventually be made a government minister. Minister of gender equality, perhaps?

Kameradschaft, 1931

The film was a landmark in cinéma verité stylization, but that’s not what’s interesting about it. What’s interesting about it was that it was that it was just another case of the arts being used as a platform to promote socialism, and a phonied-up “internationalism” of promoting German-French "solidarity" like so many dopey, government funded foundation exercises today.

It’s time to celebrate eighty years of that sort of awkward propagandizing, so rah-rah, and all that. It’s just as wooden then as it is today.

As it is with Socialism, the film has the vague stench of Communist era “brother-nation to brother-nation friendship parades” which amounted to a compulsory attendance for school children, troops, and factory workers. Drag out the German-Mongolian comradeship banners again Fritz!”

How much of this day and age's EU happy horseshit amounts to the same sort of rah-rah-ing that only the young really buy?

I Call it Terroirism

Behold the monomaniacal European mindset on display.

The French government regulates speech for no reason other than commercial purposes. Twitter and Facebook may no longer be mentioned in television unless the story is about Twitter or Facebook, and you can expect the same sort of passive-aggressive resentful coverage to be all that the two operations will be left with.

Why? Because they are foreign businesses. They would do this to other Europeans if need be.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed to uphold a 1992 decree, which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs, the Daily Mail reports.

Broadcasting anchors would be forbidden to refer to the popular social networking site and the microblogging phenomenon, unless it is relevant to a news item.

...unless it’s a domestic commercial enterprise, of course, especially if the state still has an ownership stake in it.

When you really see what laws are on their books, or when domestic motives are exhibited, there is no point in calling them free societies in the slightest way.

Christine Kelly, spokesperson for France's regulator of broadcasting Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), believes that the government is correct to uphold this law.

"Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?" Kelly said.

Regulating television content and speech using free enterprise as a pretext. The fact is that most of the natives are too far gone to grasp just how bizarre that statement really is.

The Reference Book That Has Been Missing from Your Bookshelves

…cet énorme dictionnaire coordonné par Christophe Bier et requérant les compétences d'une petite trentaine de rédacteurs entend constituer une étape vers une meilleure compréhension d'une cinématographie aujourd'hui disparue (c'est désormais l'affaire des productions vidéo, exclues de l'ouvrage)

writes Jean-Luc Douin in his Le Monde book review about (editor) Christophe Bier's "enormous dictionary" which "intends to constitute a step towards a better understanding of a cinematography that has vanished".

At almost 1200 pages, the Dictionnaire des films français pornographiques et érotiques — listing French erotic and porn movies from Les Brouteuses to Dehors-dedans through Hippopotamours and Miss Partouze — costs 89 Euros and it gets rave intellectual reviews from Jean-Luc Douin. (The reason that this is a cinematography that has supposedly "vanished" is that porn films are no longer shot on 16-mm and 35-mm film but on video, and porn videos being excluded from the encyclopedia, the titles are limited to 1,813 "films", most of them shot between 1974 and 1996 — although there is also space for Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'or ("anthropologie psychanalytique et surréaliste étonnante"), Bernardo Bertolucci's Le Dernier Tango à Paris ("grand film d'auteur, polémique et dérangeant"), Jean Becker's L'Eté meurtrier ("cinglant réquisitoire contre le viol"), and Georges Lacombe's La Lumière d'en face.)

Ce cinéma-là plaide ici pour un droit à être étudié avec son histoire, ses codes, ses modes, ses auteurs, ses stars, et cet outil de référence sur un genre déconsidéré, oublié des histoires officielles, affiche son ambition d'expliquer pourquoi il appartient au patrimoine culturel du cinéma français. "L'ambition n'est pas d'écrire un guide, mais bien cette évolution des représentations de la sexualité et du désir", écrit Christophe Bier.

Oh, and by the way, in pure intellectual fashion, in this dictionary of movies, XXX or otherwise, there are no… photos, no outtakes, no posters, no on-the-set shots, or any other image of any kind (never mind a DVD)…

Aucune illustration ne vient troubler les motivations d'un lecteur ciblé comme historien, sociologue, cinéphile plutôt que voyeur.

Comments by Le Monde readers include:

Un livre à lire de la main gauche ?

Ecrire un tel dictionnaire: quel b(l)eau job pour cette trentaine de raides-acteurs!

Chirac at the Helm of the Republic: 12 Years of Solitude

At 78, Jacques Chirac is publishing the second part of his memoirs, writes Béatrice Gurrey in Le Monde, that take us from the end of François Mitterrand's presidency to the beginning of his successor's term, via his problems with Israel and his alleged sagacity vis-à-vis Bush regarding the Iraq War. But Nicolas Sarkozy appears throughout the book, often engaging in what Chirac takes for actions undermining his authority.

…ce qui reste sa passion durant deux mandats : la politique étrangère. Nul n'a oublié le voyage à Jérusalem, où le président français, bousculé par le service d'ordre israélien, finit par exploser de colère.

Chaque détail de cette journée vaut d'être lu, jusqu'au clou, la rencontre en tête à tête avec le premier ministre israélien, Benyamin Nétanyahou. "Jacques, je suis vraiment désolé, me dit-il d'un air un peu roublard, mais si tu savais comment "ils" me traitent moi aussi. Je reçois des coups dans les côtes en permanence !" Lui aussi, se dit pourtant in petto le Français, ressemble "à un garde du corps".

… Si le septennat est marqué par la guerre des Balkans, sur laquelle M. Chirac s'explique longuement, la grande affaire diplomatique du quinquennat reste la guerre d'Irak. "Voilà exactement ce qui va se passer. Dans un premier temps, vous réussirez à prendre Bagdad sans trop de difficultés", dit-il à George W. Bush, avant de lui prédire d'inextricables problèmes entre chiites, kurdes et sunnites. Malgré quelques longueurs, le récit du suspense sur le veto aux Nations unies contre la guerre tient la route.

Weiner Caption Contest

(Thanks to Frank)

MSM in France: French Citizens Remain with That Bad Taste in the Mouth of Always Reading, Watching, or Listening to the Exact Same Information

There was a time when the officials of the 8pm newscasts were waiting for the afternoon appearance of Le Monde on the newsstands in order to figure out with which stories to lead their broadcasts

explains Daniel Psenny in his Le Monde book review of Hervé Brusini's Copie conforme : Pourquoi les médias disent-ils tous la même chose? (Certified Copy: Why Are the Media Outlets All Saying the Same Thing?), which shows just how similarly countries' respective mainstream media work (i.e., à la JournOlist).

Regarded as the "newspaper of record," the evening daily would give the tempo of information even if it so happened that, prior to its printing during the morning hours, its reporters had listened to the radio while reading ​​the dailies of the competition, which had themselves, in turn, been more or less inspired the night before by the 8pm newscasts... In short, each outlet turned out to be a "certified copy" and there was little chance of getting an echo of information from elsewhere!

With the emergence of the Internet and the social networks which, often without hindsight or analysis, make information instant, the tectonic plates of journalism have moved. Anyone can, if desired, learn where and how he so desires. Yet there remains this bad taste in the mouth of always reading, watching, or listening to the exact same information.

…Formatting, competition, economic pressures, acceleration of time, "googled" information, use of pictures for decoration, and infotainment, "the trade is reaping the costs of its own failures," [writes Brusini] as he stigmatizes "uniformity" and the "standardized information" of newsrooms overcome by "an editorial laxity and a laziness without equal."

Suicidal Dissemblement is the New Black

In a convoluted juxtaposition, the childishly scholastic world view of European “strategic thinking” is on broad display here. First off, retelling without any notion of the optional consequences, and exhibiting selective outrage through omission of the enemy’s horrors, nukes are simply called bad. It’s not naïve, it’s a willful to condemn the good societies of the world to act out some penance for the strange, guilty feelings of its’ academic leisure class – or their desire that we all “Do something! Anything!” about the things that keep them up at night.

Otherwise programming and behavior modification for the young is advocated, probably because they are pliable and don’t ask questions, and the blindingly obvious is overlooked:

Although more advanced weapons are proliferating, the question is actual again today, under the shadow of, for example, North Korea having tested rockets. The Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, said today that as long as the nuclear weapon exists, we will live under the threat of it. He also stressed the need for disarmament education in schools, including teaching that “status and prestige belong not to those who possess nuclear weapons, but to those who reject them.”

In other words, the construction of status and prestige needs to be reserved for oppressive dictators who build personality cults, and murderous theocracies.

Otherwise depend on the UN to save us from it all. After all, years of European negotiation with Ahmedinejad’s Iran over his “peaceful, energy only” nuclear program have been so fruitful.

College students' judgment of Obama has cooled significantly — sometimes to the point of disillusionment

Oberlin is one of the United States’ most traditionally — read doggedly — liberal and distinguished small colleges.

As the Ohio school is "Always earnest, often estimable and not particularly wacky in terms of lifestyle," muses John Vinocur (the most conservative commentator working for the New York Times) in the International Herald Tribune, that is a reason why it is significant to note that a

professor of politics at the college, describing Oberlin students’ judgment of President Barack Obama, said it had cooled significantly — sometimes to the point of disillusionment.

…Oberlin students now being described as “disheartened” by the performance of their President Obama, or standing at a distance from Oberlin’s badge of honor of engaged, left-wing politics?

That’s a speck of confetti in a storm of pre-2012 election indicators in America, but it’s also a fact that Mr. Obama’s most diligent canvassers in 2008 often came from the country’s campuses. Without the enthusiasm and activism of millions of students — and their authenticating support for the would-be president’s pitch as the unifying candidate of change — Mr. Obama might not have found a bridge for bringing groups of independents and Reagan Democrats into his camp.

… Michael Parkin, the faculty voice who described the Oberlin trend, placed the change of affection in relationship to the president in an emotional framework.

In a conversation after the symposium, he spoke of a love affair that, to a palpable degree, had wound down. “It started hot and heavy,” he said. “And with extremely idealized notions. Then a reality dawned in the way that a once charming laugh becomes an irritating giggle: He’s a politician who no longer corresponds to the grand ideas that many students had in their heads about him. And that’s deflating and disheartening for them.”

… Potentially pleasing to his campus activist supporters, his initial areas of focus — a world without nuclear weapons, or an apologetic refusal to hold up U.S. democracy as a model for the Arab and Islamic world — have been scaled down as presidential hallmarks.

So where are the “Peace Protesters” in Orange Jumpsuits Now ?

And were they so fond of comparing Gitmo to a concentration camp, when this kind of thing is perfectly normal in much of the Arab world?

Hamza was picked up by security forces at a protest in Jiza, a village in the rebel province of Dar'a in Syria on April 29.

For an agonising month, his desperate family waited for him to go home, terrified of what had become of him.

And when his broken body was finally returned, the injuries which disfigured almost every part of his flesh told the horrific story that he could not.

Amid the mass of cigarette burns, the bullet wounds and bruises, it is impossible to know what finally killed him.

Elsewhere: getting the attention that they deserve. That is to say, little to none.

Zukunft? Nein danke!

Thanks to Observing Herrmann for pointing this out: Europeans have been carrying around prejudices of one another around forever, despite all facts the most enduring trope is the Protestant work ethic, a.k.a. the superior productivity and output of the northerner:

A statistics-based report published by French bank Natixis chief economist Patrick Artus said Germans worked less annually and during their lifetime than Southern Europeans, and did not work more intensely than their neighbours either.

The study, based on OECD and Eurostat figures, said a German's average annual work duration (1,390 hours) was substantially lower than for a Greek (2,119), an Italian (1,773) a Portuguese (1,719) and a Spaniard (1,654).

A French person works 1,554 hours per year, said the study which was published on Monday.

"Germany's productivity per head remains close to the average of southern European countries. Its hourly productivity rate is above average but not better than France or Greece," the study added.

They do seem more productive somehow, or at least more prone to sweep the streets. But how long will this last?
The only other visible differences could be a result of:

A) higher value of the goods that Deutscher und Detscherinnen are making/adding value to, or:
B) There is a higher percentage of population in the workforce, or,
C) cheaper (relative) inputs to that output.

Either way, it doesn’t bode well. The Asians will be spanking them on (A), the workforce is aging which will nuke (B), and the biggest single input into everything (C), energy is now wholly controlled by loons who think that their little life, their coffee in the morning, their bus ride, etc. somehow is immune to relying on solar panels, windmills, opposing hydro power, not allowing a coal mine to operate, and nuking nuclear power.

Once again, some observer might note that “the lights are going out across Europe”. Again it will be a result of self-induced popular hysteria.

Many Men Are Tired and Weary…

The story of D-Day.