Don’t look now – but Italy is no longer at the center of Eurozone fears. Indeed, the interest rates the government there pays on its debt are now back down closer to the “normal” rates of old. And this all has to do with Mario Monti, installed as the “technocratic” prime minister only some four months ago:

Neuer Politikstil in Rom: Monti und die Millionäre mischen Italien auf… http://t.co/hd2d9zW6

March 20, 2012 7:08 am via SPIEGEL ONLINEReplyRetweetFavorite

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Yes, the grand-daddy of German newsmagazines, Der Spiegel is impressed – or at least writer Hans-Jürgen Schlamp and his editors there are. Could it be that, somehow, Italy is turning itself around precisely by becoming a bit more “German”?

Not really – unless you’re referring to “German” as in “Third Reich” (and we know you are not). For the striking thing about this article is how undemocratic that country has come to be. It’s the politicians in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies who were elected, after all; neither Monti nor the rest of cabinet ever were. Yet these days, they get what they want. Schlamp’s piece leads off with the tale of this government’s current attempt to curtail workers’ protection against being fired. Since forever that has been out of the question – the Left there, always strong whether actually in power at the national level or not, would never allow any such thing. Yet now it’s the Labor Minister, Elsa Fornero, who is warning the unions “We can’t negotiate forever,” meaning that they better finally show some “give” on the issue or the government will just take the measure it wants passed to the legislature anyway – and probably get its way.

The basic problem is that, while it’s true that these legislators were elected, it was largely they who brought the country to the brink of default and economic collapse in the first place. Voters know that they messed things up with who they chose.

Which then also means that there is going to be a problem when this “technocratic phase” comes to an end, which will happen at the latest when the next national elections come around next year. How do you profile yourself to your voters when you’re just giving the unelected government everything they demand – because you know full well that’s what those voters now want? It would be no use refusing: the country’s in trouble, haven’t you heard?, so you would just get yourself irredeemably in their bad graces. But everyone else is simply deferring to the government as well.

Naturally, this situation is the worst of all for what is left of former premier Berlusconi’s party, considering the way he was driven from office in disgrace. According to Schlamp, those politicians are very confused: “Many see their political survival linked to the return of their former Leader [the article does actually use here the infamous term Führer]. Others consider that to be the worst of all [possible] variants.”

Nonetheless, decision-time will come, because Mario Monti and his Merry Men aren’t going to stick around forever. He has already made it clear that he’ll head back to his professorship at Bocconi University (Milan) after those 2013 elections. And anyway, Italy is a democracy: it’s supposed to have a proper, democratically legitimate government.

UPDATE: Whoops! Did Herr Schlamp – and, by extension, I – write too soon?

Italy’s largest trade union, the CGIL, says it will hold a general strike over plans to reform employment laws http://t.co/UWabccdF

March 21, 2012 4:20 pm via BBC NewsReplyRetweetFavorite

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In case you didn’t notice, Germany lost its President a month ago. Don’t worry, it was no great tragedy. After initial resistance – including trying to intimidate the editor-in-chief of Germany’s most-sold newspaper into withholding a particularly damning news-article – Christian Wulff finally decided he needed to resign after embarrassing revelations finally emerged concerning a loan for a house he had received in the past, and denied receiving, from a prominent businessman. So not tragic – just sleazy, certainly in light of the standards the Germans usually like to uphold post-1945, and thus also rather embarrassing. It’s little wonder your local German ambassador/Goethe Institute/German expat down the street was less than keen to draw this news to your attention.

Naturally, now they need to pick another one, and in Germany that is done indirectly, by a one-time body (the Bundesversammlung) composed of all the members of the lower house of parliament (the Bundestag) plus an equal number of state delegates, totalling 1,244 people in all. But Chancellor Angela Merkel moved fast to gain approval from almost all the main parties for Wulff’s main opponent the last time, Joachim Gauck, to become the new president. So he’s a shoo-in for that, although the German Left Party (Die Linke) has obstinately put forward its own candidate anyway, Beate Klarsfeld.

And with all that, Germany finds itself thrust backward into the 20th century, in the opinion of Stern writer Lutz Kinkel:

Gauck und Klarsfeld: Willkommen im 20. Jahrhundert!: Die Wahl des Bundespräsidenten setzt uns in eine… http://t.co/330BzfeP

March 17, 2012 8:35 am via stern.deReplyRetweetFavorite

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Look at the candidates, Kinkel says. Joachim Gauck, a Lutheran pastor, gained fame as a dissident in the former Communist East Germany. When the Wall fell, he was appointed as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi archives, or at least what was left after the Stasi had done their best to destroy them as the DDR fell. In Germany his last name has even been elevated to the status of “KIeenex” or “Hoover”: to “Gauck” someone is to go see whether he/she might have a file kept on them by the Stasi, and if so, what it says.

Then there is Beate Klarsfeld. A journalist, she has spent most of her adult life (along with her husband) hunting down ex-Nazis, such as Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon, and others. At times her anti-Nazis efforts have perhaps gone too far – if you define “too far” as being sent to jail – including her most (in)famous incident in 1969 when she slapped the current West German Chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, because of his history of working for/in the Nazi Party during the Second World War (and, again, that was not the only time she has been jailed).

Look at them! Both are admirable, driven people – but what “made” them was fighting the old wars of the 20th century, the struggle against the Nazis, the struggle against Communist dictatorship! Haven’t we finally moved on from that, Kinkel asks? On the other hand, did not Christian Wulff seem just perfect for this new era? Big business; bribery; bling-bling; Bundespräsident – surely that’s what we’re all about following the financial crash/scandals of the last few years. After all, a President must reflect his people – just take a look across the Rhine to France!

Even if Kinkel’s analysis is borne out, at least Germany is not being propelled too far back into the twentieth century. A little of that may do no harm; a lot, not so much, historically speaking.

Prepare to have some of your most cherished illusions destroyed:

Tierisch komisch? Was das #Lachen der #Tiere wirklich bedeutet http://t.co/0dpFghzK

March 10, 2012 7:19 pm via rponlineReplyRetweetFavorite

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“What the laughter of animals really means,” it says there. The smiles, too – like what we always see on dolphins, for example, and if you click through to the Rheinische Post article you are rewarded right there at the top with one smiling right at you and his (?) buddy not far behind.

The thing is: they’re not smiling at you; they always look that way, even when they are asleep, since as the author Jörg Zittlau explains, they “can’t do anything but grin, since their muscles don’t [really] enable any sophisticated mimicry.” Not even chimpanzees, when they seem to crack up over something, are really in a comic mood. Rather, Zittlau explains, it’s more likely that they’re agitated, even stressed-out. Yes, chimpanzees (unlike most animals) are capable of laughter, but it’s not what you would expect. As Zittlau quotes psychologist Robert Provine, “The chimpanzee’s laughter is more a gutteral grunt.”

What about Fido – you know that he laughs, you’ve heard him yourself, right? Well, yes and no: again, dogs do seem capable of laughter, but not in the form you would expect. “It sounds to an untrained human ear merely like the usual dog-panting,” says this time one Patricia Simonet from Sierra Nevada College, and it usually occurs – as you would expect – when the dog is at play.

Oh, and “laughing” hyenas? Sorry: that “laughing” is more often an expression of frustration, when it is not being used (by means of its specific frequency and tone) to confirm the animal’s place in the pack pecking-order.

So Putin has been “elected” Russia’s president for a third time. Well, some remain unwilling just to accept this lying down – er, fully clothed. Yes, one of the world’s favorite protest groups swung into action yesterday in Moscow to protest Russia’s crooked election. The group calls itself Femen, and it’s a media-favorite mainly due to its attention-getting tactics – so time-tested and traditional, in a way, yet now employed for political ends: they are all comely young women, and they take their tops off.

The result is frequent intriguing headlines such as Women Go Topless Against Putin and the like. (Click if you will, but the photo-series is of course rated PG.) But there is another aspect to this group’s operations that is intriguing as well, if one can pull one’s eyes away from the fleshly dazzle. For Femen is a Ukrainian organization – so what are they doing in Moscow, and what do they care about Putin?

Actually, this Moscow altercation – which apparently earned its Femen protagonists several days in jail, and which took place at the very same polling-station where Putin himself was scheduled to come vote, naturally: this has emerged as a standard Femen tactic – was a romp in the park compared to the group’s protest action in Minsk last December against the dictator there, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Belarussian KGB – they still call it that there – proved itself to be quite unimpressed with the charms on display; they not only rather roughly arrested the Femen protestors, but then took them off to the woods to terrorize them for a bit, including cutting off their hair. But of course they did not want to go too far, given the constant media attention these women enjoy, and which to some extent is their protective shield even as they otherwise leave themselves naked.

Still: Ukraine, Belarus, Moscow – OK, it was once all one country, and many cultural similarities remain. But Femen activists have also reportedly been spotted in Milan, protesting in some way or another against the fashion industry. I couldn’t find much material on that, but what I do have is recent reports about how the Austrian political scene is about to get a bit more interesting. Yes, a two-woman Femen delegation – that’s them in the picture up above – recently traveled to Vienna to give the Austrian Green Party political-action tips. According to the report in the authoritative Austrian newspaper Die Presse, that included a how-to session on “boob prints,” which have turned out to be the #1 money-raising article from their Femenshop. (Unfortunately, the text on that webpage is only in Cyrillic – probably Ukrainian – which likely means that those too far removed from Kiev could find it difficult to mail-order the goods on display here. Any enterprising Western Internet-business(wo)man interested in helping out?) The German newsmagazine Focus actually has a photo-series showing them at their press conference, making the aforesaid print; the rather more staid Die Presse limits itself to collecting juicy quotes from the Femen representatives, such as “We want to show how you do it: go out onto the streets, disrobe, and win!” and that they all still call their mothers every day, who invariably ask “whether we are dressing warmly enough.”

In the final analysis, though, Austria is another culture entirely, as is Milan, so it is a significant step outward into the world. Why would the girls of Femen want to stop there? What I’m suggesting is that we might be seeing here the beginnings of the next great transnational political movement. Yes, after the Occupy Wall Street protests, it’s time to take it from the top!