euro topics

I've been subscribing to a very useful newsletter called euro topics for a few weeks now. It provides an overview of interesting articles published all over Europe with the main focus being on political topics. The idea obviously is amazing, I read French, German, and English, but getting the Spanish, Romanian, or Bulgarian point of view on things is extremely interesting.

Yet, I noticed a sizable caveat today which made me remember the potential pitfalls that relying on a translation entail. Yesterday's newsletter included a commentary taken from Le Quotidien on Juncker's candidacy to the EU Presidency. Here is the excerpt:

"The Luxembourg newspaper Le Quotidien is all for Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker becoming president of the EU. But it questions whether Juncker will be able to win over the rest of Europe: 'Other European heavy-weights have also thrown their hats into the ring. In 2004 it looked like everything would have gone Juncker's way if the European Constitution had been adopted. But now it's a completely different story. The British are determined to back Tony Blair come what may. Although he does enjoy an incontestable international popularity, his 'Eurosceptic' track record is dubious to say the least. But it remains to be seen whether the Europeans want Juncker as much as we do here in Luxembourg.'"

The problem is that this is at best a misleading translation of what Le Quotidien actually says (I noticed this only because I was working on a blog entry of my own on Juncker and had wanted to read the whole article in the original). The columnist for example never explicitly takes position in favor of Juncker's candidacy. The belief that Juncker would have had more success in 2004 is based on diplomatic circles not on the writer's personal opinion. Finally, the concluding sentence, while faithfully translated, is completely taken out of contact as it orignally refers to Juncker declaring before the elections in 2004 and 2009 that he would leave (for Europe) if not reelected. It does not comment on his popularity in Luxembourg today or even his compatriots' approval of his ascendancy to the EU Presidency.

I still am thrilled by the general idea and will continue to subscribe to the service, but I guess the lesson of the day is that one should never completely rely on something translated by someone else.

German Foreign Policy Under its New Government

The third installment of my work with ACUS: German Foreign Policy

Please note that I have nothing to do with, the irrelevant at best, title.

A Gathering of Old Men

After Mozart and Leadbelly A Gathering of Old Men is the second book by Earnest J Gaines and in a way I was surprised not to be enthralled. Maybe my expectations were too high, but something just wasn't right about this book. Gaines talks about the South, he talks about race, he mocks religion (or the priest in any case), on the face of it I would have to love the book. Yet, nothing ever remains as simple as it seems.

Gathering of Old Men tells the story of a group of old, black men who have suffered indignation and abuse by white people all their lives and finally decide to make a stand and defend one of theirs suspected of the murder of a white man. Gaines tells the story by switching from one character to another, providing varied view points while not becoming incomprehensible or impossible to follow. The problem of the book lies simply in the fact that it is too simple. It's message is too straight forward, the characters develop no depth (with the possible exception of one important non-main one) and the reader always feels longing for some more food for thought. The cover of the book is adorned with a very nice folk art picture of three old black men with guns. I liked that picture. I like folk art, but I guess as far as literature is concerned I like things a bit less obvious and straight forward.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Slightly late, but here is my second post for the Atlantic Council:
The View from Europe

Portrait d'un inconnu

Portrait d'un inconnu de Nathalie Sarraute a été une lecture frustrante pour moi. J'ai sans doute essaye de lire trop vite (comme je fais par l'habitude) mais ma (toujours limitee) connaissance du français en combinaison avec le degré de difficulté de la langage et du stream-of-consciousness (y a-t-il un mot pour cela en français?) ont assure que je n'ai pas beaucoup compris. Malheureusement. Je n'aime pas échoué comme ça et j'aime bien pense que cela ne m'arrive pas souvent, mais cette fois ci je n'ai juste pas réussi de me mettre dans le bouquin. Largement, j'ai évidemment qu'il y a un narrateur qui décrit un père et sa fille qui habite dans sa maison, mais je ne veux même pas savoir combien de détails (petits et grand) m'ont échappé. Pire, je n'avais même pas l'envie de retourner et d'essayer de comprendre mieux ce qui se passe et ce que lui (le narrateur) et elle (l'auteure) veulent nous dire. Lecture frustrante et sans beaucoup de compréhension, et je ne peux même pas réclamer que le livre n'est pas bien, cela n'a juste pas marcher pour moi peu importe la raison.

Requiem for a Nun

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." This might be a reminder to some Germans trying to leave Germany's pre-1949 history behind, or French ignoring the evils of colonialism, or in general anyone pretending their history doesn't matter anymore since it is (too far) in the past. yet, it is by William Faulkner as always talking about the South or more specifically his heroine's, Temple Drake, past. Requiem for a Nun (I feel like there aren't many of his books that I haven't read yet by now, and I am already looking forward to re-reading some of the ones I read a long time ago) is a bizarre novel (maybe something that Sartre would call anti-roman) in a play. Or a play in a novel. Faulkner tells the early story of Yoknapatawpha County in a novelized form, while telling us of a (white) mother's quest to liberate the (black) killer of her infant daughter her uncle(-in-law) serving as facilitator of this attempt. Faulkner aficionados will be familiar with most of the main characters (Temple Drake from Sanctuary, Gavin Stevens from all over the place, Gowan Stevens, but also the early population of Yoknapatawpha County, Sutpen, Compson, Ratcliffe (whose name will become Ratliff over time, Satroris...) and the combination of a historical novel and a modern play, one interrupting the other, makes for early incomprehension of the reader. I feel having read Sanctuary, already knowing Gavin Stevens and most of the characters from Yoknapatawpha's early days enabled me to appreciate the text much more than someone without this knowledge would have been able to.

What else can I say? I love Faulkner's writing, not merely because it is convoluted and takes forever to get to the point, not even because it twists and turns within one single sentence, maybe not even because his topics elicit a hard to understand pleasure in German middle class kid - what is my relation to the American South after all? what have I to do with racial relations from the early 19th to the middle of the 20th century - not just because his body of work has to be seen as one with interlinks between his novels and characters occurring constantly; no, his writing satisfies me through its intricacies, its long-winded sentences which seemingly never come to an end and which embody a Southern life style which move slowly, rejects outside influence and is willing to fight against it even when it might share the outside's intended goals. Read it, especially if you want to know why Jefferson is called Jefferson, I won't tell you.

Huis clos & Les mouches

J'ai normalement un peu du mal à me mettre au théâtre autant que dans la prose. Je préfère largement le théâtre joué. Mais Sartre dans ces deux pièces, Huis clos & Les mouches une fois de nouveau réussit à me convaincre. Ses œuvres littéraires sont vraiment très forts. Voire très forts. Surtout Huis clos; très court, est d'une force frappante. Un homme et deux femmes sont à l'enfer, ils y souffrent à l'éternité et ont quand même du mal à réaliser où ils sont et ce qu'ils attendent. Les mouches au contraire est beaucoup moins direct, beaucoup plus difficile à comprendre. Je ne veux même pas savoir combien m'échapper dans ce texte. Je devrais vraiment lire une interprétation. La pièce est une variation d'une ancienne histoire grecque. Le frère et la femme d'Agammemnon payent pour l'avoir tué, ses enfants le vengent mais payent en leur tour.

Je place Sartre dans mon panthéon des écrivains vraiment grands déjà. Je sais qu'il est connu plutôt pour ses essais politique ou philosophe, mais sa prose sans doute vaut le coup.

The Lisbon Treaty and EU Foreign Policy

I just started working for another blog. Here, my first post.

Is NY still a democracy?

Really just want to throw this out there, because I find it quite shocking. Basically, Mayor Bloomberg is ignoring a decision made in a city-wide referendum limiting officials to two consecutive terms running for reelection. (NYT) Sounds like the kind of thing against which the US would run amok if it happened in Central or South America and involved a left-wing President. To be fair, the government (aka, the CDU) of Hamburg also ignores its citizens' decision-making (SZ). Still, this seems kind of crazy in the biggest and (by name) most important US city. Today the NY Times made its readers aware of the fact that in two Democratic runoff elections (for public advocate and comptroller - whatever the fuck these people actually do) 8% of eligible Democrats actually voted. That means that 2% of the city's population decided on who will - undoubtedly - fill these positions. If that is the future of democracy, I sincerely do hope the last guy around will remember to turn the lights off.

The Power and the Glory

An old friend of mine had told me that I should read Graham Greene at some point. We are not in contact anymore, nor friends, but I did finally get around to read one of Greene's books. The Power and the Glory tells the story of a priest on the run in a Mexican province after a socialist uprising has razed all the churches and killed or corrupted all priests. The last remaining 'whiskey priest' devoid of any adherence to Catholic decorum and dependent on brandy constantly keeps on the move trying to avoid a ruthless, if morally sound, Lieutnant trying to serve his people by killing the religion still living within their midst.

Greene portrays this particular Mexican province as a desperate and desolate place and he does a great job describing a variety of stock characters most of whom are not deeply explored even while Greene offers a powerful portrait of them. The pious mother trying to instill religion into their children, her critical son, the poor and hypocritical Judas, the alcoholic Brit trying to leave, the atheist German happy on his farm. I cannot say that the story enthralled me per se, but I did eat up the people populating it. Maybe this was due to the philosophical or political questions touched upon in the book, religion and the state and the people, simply not being of any significant interest to me. I'll read another of his book and I can recommend him, but reading the book with the high expectations I had, I couldn't help but being slightly disappointed.

Hygiène de l'assassin

Je suis plus ou moins sur que je n'avais pas encore lu un livre d'une autrice belge née en Japon avant et je dois avouer que son livre est presque si bizarre que cette combinaison d'origines. Hygiène de l'assassin d'Amélie Nothomb décrit plusieurs entretiens par quatre journalistes différents avec un gagnant du prix Nobel génial, cynique et insultant. Il est peu clair ce que Nothomb veux dire au lecteur avec son livre. Il y a des indices qui font penser a une critique de notre société sur-médiatisée ou des journalistes peu critiques et trop facile a impressionner, mais le dernier entretien prouve cela absurde. Effectivement, le seul résultat de la lecture de ce livre est le respect devant la façon comment l'autrice (je sais, mais il faut être féministe un peu, non?) a l'écrit. Elle montre une bataille intellectuelle entre les journalistes (surtout la dernière) et la personnage principale qui est très bienfait, très bien écrit même exhilerant parfois. Le seul problème avec l'histoire est qu'on ne comprends jamais a quoi elle sert. La fin du livre laisse tomber le lecteur sans qu'il comprends pour quoi ces évènements se passent ou s'ils ont un sens.

The Armies of the Night

Norman Mailer is one of these numerous figures whom I have heard more about than I actually know or have read (if that makes sense). Noam Chomsky, who appears in this book, is another. I did read The Naked and the Dead is the, seemingly, dark ages, when I was too young and read too fast (I have virtually no recollection of the book anymore). So, I had no idea what to expect of The Armies of the Night, yet Mailer still managed to surprise me.

History as a novel, the novel as history. The book is split in two parts, the first one consisting of Mailer's experiences (recounted in a third person narrative, quite disconcerting throughout the book I found) attending an anti-Vietnam protest (the March on the Pentagon) in the fall of 1967. While the content of this part is quite factual, he lived all of it after all, Mailer tells it like a novel. The second part of the book is a recount of what happened in the lead up to the March and during the following 48 hours, while Mailer was in jail. It is the journalistic or historical part, but really the novel since Mailer wasn't actually present. This made for a very intriguing concept and split I found.

What is fascinating besides the story which is amusing, captivating and informative at once is to see Mailer portray himself as egocentric and selfish at the same time that he goes to jail for a cause and pokes fun at his persona's need to be the center of attention. He manages to step away from himself and provide the reader with an objective description of himself even while it remains clear that Mailer considers himself no slough.

It might be argued that the book today is more interesting because of its stylistic audacity as well as the author himself than the very journalistic and micro-orientated coverage of one demonstration against the Vietnam War, but I felt that the book is worth it out of all three counts. One not necessarily overwhelming the other and a glimpse into the war's opposition at the same time proved instructive as well.

Europe's Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn

In response to a really bad NY Times article:

To be blunt, this was just bad reporting, leading to an article containing factual errors as well as analytical ones. This starts out with the article's headline equating the SPD with European socialist parties. Actually, the Social Democratic Party as it is correctly named within the text itself is not a socialist party anymore in rhetoric either (it wasn't in fact long before that) since the publication of its Godesberger Program in 1959.

The author then claims that the 'Socialists [...] [are] fighting to preserve systems that voters think need to be improved.' That might well be true in some cases, in Germany the SPD lost voters precisely because they tried to reform the system in government with a red-green coalition from 1998 to 2005. The SPD is being punished not because it refuses to adapt, but because it tried to reform. The Left which refuses the need for social reforms and is the real socialist party in Germany, against the odds has succeeded to establish itself on the national scene. Steven Erlanger's claim cited above is simply not true then, the reverse is true for Germany.

Finally, it is of course not true, that the left (Greens, SPD, Die Linke) has a structural majority in parliament, that is exactly what changed on Sunday.

There are additional analytical mistakes concerning the relation between The Left and the SPD, but these issues are, to some extent, up to debate while the aforementioned three points are simply wrong.

Une mort très douce

Simone de Beauvoir et son Deuxième Sexe est sur ma liste des lectures depuis longtemps. Au lieu de cela je viens de finir un bouquin d'elle plutôt essayiste et très personnel, Une mort très douce sur la démise de sa mère. J'avais beaucoup aimé les trois romans par Sartre que j'ai lu et j'ai été un peu surpris d'apprécier l'écriture de Beauvoir autant que celle de celui. Le livre n'est pas captivant comme soi, la fin est claire dès le début, mais les réflexions philosophique de l'auteure sont d'une puissance frappante. Je n'ai pas été capable de les suivre d'une façon très personnelle, mes parents sont vivants encore et je crois (et pense et espère) que cela ne changera pas pour les années qui viennent, mais Beauvoir est une monstre intellectuelle et la regarder réfléchir est un plaisir. Je ne veux pas constaté qu'elle n'aurait pas de sentiment, elle souffre de la maladie de sa mère comme tout le monde le ferait, mais elle a une capacité de s'éloigner de soi-même et d'analyser ses pensées qui est fascinante et crée de la jalousie. Ayant dit tout cela son œuvre est écrit très simple et il n'est pas un grand travail de la littérature, il montre juste que l'auteure est impressionnante et donne envie de lire plus d'elle.

Das Gut Stepantschikowo und seine Bewohner

Dostojewski ist leider einer dieser Autoren, welche ich viel zu jung und schnell gelesen habe. Ich werde Schuld und Suehne sicherlich noch einmal lesen, doch fuers erste beendete ich gestern Das Gut Stepantschikowo und seine Bewohner. Ein furchtbares Buch, ganz ernsthaft. Basierend auf einer Geschichte von Molière dessen Titel ich mich nicht mehr entsinne, erzaehlt Dostojewski die Geschichte eines Mannes, welcher selber zu oft getreten wurde und nun als Tyrann ueber einen Haushalt herrscht in welchem er eigentlich nur zu Gast ist. Die Art und Weise wie dieser Foma Fomitsch seinen Gastherren misshandelt und quaelt ist furchtbar erniedrigend. Der Geist des Lesers straeubt sich noch staerker gegen die Selbstgeisselung des nominellen Hausherren, welcher den ihm moralisch, staendisch sowie nach Vermoegen unterlegen Foma, wegen einer leicht intellektuellen Ueberlegenheit, welche dieser in eine staendige moralische Dominanz verwandelt, richtiggehend verehrt und jeden Fehl und Tadel nur bei sich selbst sucht (und findet).

Das Buch ist also grausam und furchtbar zu Lesen, ja fast nur mit Widerstand, aber dies liegt daran, dass Dostojewski unglaublich erfolgreich ist darin diese abstossende menschliche Konstellation darzustellen. Ich weiss deswegen wirklich nicht, was ich von diesem Buch halten soll. Es war sehr, sehr unangenehm es zu lesen, aber kann ich Dostojewski vorwerfen, dass es ihm gelingt den Menschen von seiner schlimmsten bzw naivsten und deswegen mitleiderregendsten Seite zu beschreiben?

The Nick Adams Stories

Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories was published post-posthumously with some of the stories being mere sketches of what Hemingway had planned to write. Nick Adams to some extent mirrors the author's life. He is not Hemingway of course, but their lives revolve around some of the same experiences. The stories in this collection show Nick growing up in rural Michigan, hunting in violation of the law and fishing, always fishing. He fights in the war, he is injured, he goes back home and has a hard time adjusting, finally he marries and has a son.

I usually have a hard time getting into short stories, the themes they explore are seemingly over right when one started to understand them. This collection is different, not only is Hemingway's court writing well-suited for short stories, these also circle around and detail one person, meaning that a far more well-rounded picture of the character is given.

What I find fascinating with Hemingway per se, and this is true with other writers as well, but less so, is how much his writing is inspired by his own life. Every single book or story I have read by him can be traced back to an event in his life that inspired it. This is not supposed to detract from his writing genius of course, I think he is amazing quite honestly, but it is striking nonetheless.

Dubliners

I've grown to rather like James Joyce. I liked A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners as well proved very enjoyable. I guess that means I will have to give the Ulysseus I have standing in Berlin another shot at some point. We'll see. Time will surely take care of that.

Dubliners is made up of fifteen stories taking a closer look at variety of characters living in the Irish capital. The protagonists populating these stories, this town, are nothing special. They are pious and crooks. Young and old, satisfied with having left Dublin unhappy at having stayed; married, faithful and abstinent. They are neither heroic nor afraid. They are you and me, some more reflective some less. Joyce paints all of them in extremely humane colors, makes them accessible to the reader and allows him to easily relate to them. There is grand scheme hidden behind their description and I am not even sure one knows much more about Dublin after having read these stories apart from some mention of Irish nationalism these stories could take place anywhere and anytime. Joyce is great in giving character studies without divulging every little piece of information to the reader. If only Ulysseus weren't so hard and difficult to follow, I would hold him in even higher esteem.

Notre-Dame de Paris

"Un livre génial [...] Quasimodo est la personnification du peuple français du Moyen Age, opprimé et méprisé, sourd et difforme, mais en qui s'éveille la conscience de son bon droit et de ses forces infinies, encore inentamées."

C'est ça l'interprétation de Dostoïesvski du chef-œuvre de Victor Hugo. Je ne crois pas que j'aie arrivé à cette conclusion moi-même. Mais qui suis-je de ne pas être d'accord avec Dostoïesvski(de qui je suis en train de commencer un bouquin d'ailleurs, drôle de hasard)? Et du coup, on est bien d'accord que le livre est génial. L'histoire du bossu monstrueux qui tombe amoureux de la belle gitane, Quasimodo et Esméralda, est connu mondiale et a été adapté pour le film à plusieurs reprises. Mais même avec les grandes lignes des événements peu surprenant, Notre-Dame de Paris fascine par les personnages et leur description détaillée (dont celles des personnages de la deuxième ou troisième plan) mais aussi par l'aventure soi-même. La mort et la misère qui sont toujours présents. Plus difficile c'est le Paris du 14ème décrit du point de vue du Paris du 18ème, peu compréhensible pour quelqu'un connaissant le Paris d'aujourd'hui superficiellement.

The economics of my job

Let's strip away for a second the morality issue of lying and try to look only at the underlying economics of doing business in the Middle East versus western, industrialized countries. In a capitalist market system constant competition is supposed to regulate supply and demand and assure that neither the seller nor the buyers accrue rents (aka make more money than they should based on the economic fundamentals. That is the theory, in practice this of course means that rents accrue to both sides in different deals in order to arrive at equilibrium position. Perfect information, a condition of that model, is nothing but a chimera of course, but in a competitive market prices should be decently close to equilibrium.

Now, in most countries in the Middle East (and outside the West in general (this is a geographic simplification of course, sorry)) this is not the case. Information is even more asymmetric and there is a powerful governmental actor that needs to be catered to (in a truly capitalist system he should only be acknowledged and taken into consideration), that results in rents being accrued to those on the good side of information and the governmental actor (both being the same most of the time). Looking at countries exporting a valuable good in high demand, companies within those countries are the ones benefiting from these rents since the governmental actor will not be swayed by a massive group of individualistic buyers abroad.

It is these rents that the company I work for targets. They allow higher advertisement prices and the interest in them allow to increase pressure on companies to advertise through references made to the governmental actor. It is the reason why this kind of system works better in developing countries than in more competitive (capitalist if you want) market regimes. To be harsh, it is the reason why this works better in countries with an autocratic regime not controlled by an attentive public running the place.

My Job

I've been working for a publishing company for the last few weeks and felt I should share the insight into the industry this has given me. The company that I work for publishes interview-based business books concentrating on and presenting one particular economic sector in a variety of countries. A book consists of eight chapters each filled with maybe eight interviews as well as chapter-opening editorials and a variety of interactive features (fora, maps and the such). We are part of a whole industry focusing on this kind of work and on the face of it the idea doesn't sound that bad. A bit boring maybe because of the heavy concentration on companies' fate, but nothing out of the ordinary. In reality we are part of an industry of leeches, supposedly with us being the good guys, but still living off of others achievements.

Basically, what we do is we go to a country and try to do interviews with all relevant CEOs in the sector which we cover there. These interviews we collect in a book format. The book is sold, but we make our money on advertisement that we try to sell those same executives. Now, this might be something I personally find boring (and it is) and unattractive, but it is not per se bad or distasteful to provide a forum for advertisement and make your living like that. The moral problem for me lies in the fact that we lie and cheat the whole time to achieve our goals. We pretend to be journalists in order to get the interview (which is not true, we create content in order to sell advertisement, not the other way around). We lie about our distribution numbers (I suspect that the number of executives supposedly reading our books is a fourth of what we claim it to be). We sell a product (an ad) that most people in this industry don't need and if they did I have serious doubts about its effectiveness.

The book we sell and the advertisement in it is pointless for two maybe three reasons. Firstly, the distribution numbers we cite are wrong, there are simply not enough readers. Secondly, even the executives receiving our book are unlikely to actually read through it carefully or even handle it longer than a few minutes (I might be wrong about this and am willing to concede this point). Thirdly, our publication is useless as an analytical tool, it is a number of interviews which the executives are allowed to edit themselves. Obviously no one talks about his companies' weaknesses. Anyone basing their business decision on this has himself to blame only. That is also the reason why advertising is pointless for these companies. They are not dealing with individual customers deciding between an expensive Coke and a cheap same-product no-brand-name soft drink, they are trying to attract companies handling millions not willing to invest based on an ad they saw somewhere at some point.

The funny (or ironic) thing is that we are the good guys in this industry. Others pretend to work for Fox or CNN or The Economist and charge astronomical figures to run features on those platforms (which is then surprisingly called CNN-whatever.net or something like that). We charge less (even if still a lot) and produce a book that is of significantly higher quality than our competitors' products. Still, that doesn't change the underlying morality issues of this industry. I don't have a problem with a hard-fought capitalist system (I might not necessarily take part in it all that much, but that's a different story), this is different. Historically (the last few years in any case) my company has focused on publishing these kind of books in the Middle East. There they try to obtain a partnership with someone in the government (or pretend to have that kind of agreement) and because of the autocratic, non-transparent nature of these countries they succeed in making everyone buy expensive ads (basically everyone wants to please the big guy who is on board or at least supposedly on board). This whole industry then is not an outgrowth of a highly capitalistic system, but rather the result of an unjust, government-centered economy which deprives the biggest parts of their population of the benefits of that sector on the economy which we focus on (and which I will not name here in case you were wondering).

Additionally, the tactic of our sale is quite simply repugnant. We go in, chat with the guy (there are no women), try to make friends, then I interview him (I could never do the sales part) trying to give us credibility as a serious publication, finally my colleague goes in for the kill. Name-dropping everyone who is big in that particular sector, claiming we have talked to all of them and implying they have all bought ads (both of which is not true). The idea is to make the guy bend to an onslaught of words and ideas. Did I mention that the sales person (always a girl) evidently is attractive, laughs at every joke and eats up avidly everything the CEO says as if she were watching the pre-Civil War Republican Lincoln-Douglas debates (ok, bad comparison, but you know what I mean)?

What is amusing is that this concept does not work as well in industrialized, Western countries. The capitalist system is more built-up here. People don't fall for glossy publications, an attractive sales girl and the apparent support of some high government official would make them laugh. Working in these countries drives home the point that what this industry usually does is living off of others livelihood.

Yeah, this is what I do. Funny how some as me could end up in a job like that. Well, I quit last week. Just couldn't do it anymore. The money is real good, but I have other priorities in life and quite honestly I hated every second of doing this (or was only bored at the best of times).

Just as a disclaimer. I am aware that some people might be of other opinions regarding the effectiveness of advertisement. Please keep in mind the aforementioned difference in advertising to a mass of people for an individual product and doing the same thing with a target of more successful than average group of specialists in their sector. I believe we would agree that the effects are not the same. Apart from that, even granted this whole advertisement thing works great, that still makes us liars and cheaters even if the word leeches might not be accurate anymore. The striking thing for me was that that was how I thought about ourselves and then found out that some of the companies call us that too.