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BONUS: Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.

Venice Invaded by 'Low Quality' Tourists

This cracks me up. "Low quality." It's like Trump's attack on his "low energy" Republican rivals in the primaries, heh.

At the New York Times, "Venice, Invaded by Tourists, Risks Becoming ‘Disneyland on the Sea’":

VENICE — “You guys, just say ‘skooozy’ and walk through,” a young American woman commanded her friends, caught in one of the bottlenecks of tourist traffic that clog Venice’s narrow streets, choke its glorious squares and push the locals of this enchanting floating city out and onto drab, dry land. “We don’t have time!”

Neither, the Italian government worries, does Venice.

Don’t look now, but Venice, once a great maritime and mercantile power, risks being conquered by day-trippers.

The soundtrack of the city is now the wheels of rolling luggage thumping up against the steps of footbridges as phalanxes of tourists march over the city’s canals. Snippets of Venetian dialect can still be heard between the gondoliers rowing selfie-snapping couples. But the lingua franca is a foreign mash-up of English, Chinese and whatever other tongue the mega cruise ships and low-cost flights have delivered that morning. Hotels have replaced homes.

Italian government officials, lamenting what they call “low-quality tourism,” are considering limiting the numbers of tourists who can enter the city or its landmark piazzas.

“If you arrive on a big ship, get off, you have two or three hours, follow someone holding a flag to Piazzale Roma, Ponte di Rialto and San Marco and turn around,” said Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture minister, who lamented what he called an “Eat and Flee” brand of tourism that had brought the sinking city so low.

“The beauty of Italian towns is not only the architecture, it’s also the actual activity of the place, the stores, the workshops,” Mr. Franceschini added. “We need to save its identity.”

The city’s locals, whatever is left of them anyway, feel inundated by the 20 million or so tourists each year. Stores have taken to putting signs on the windows showing the direction to St. Mark’s Square or Ponte di Rialto, so people will stop coming in to ask them where to go...

Heh, I feel the Venetian pain, lol. Maybe they should come hang out in Anaheim for a few days, and see how many Disneyland tourists they hit it off with?

More.

Danielle Gersh's Lightning and Thunderstorms Forecast

It's really trippy weather. It's hot and humid, but it's been totally overcast. I saw no rain in the O.C. today, but who knows? They're spot downpours, and they're stationary. The winds haven't picked up.

In any case, I'm sticking around the house for the rest of the week, and then back to the office next week to finish up work on my course syllabi.

So, here's a midweek weather forecast from the fabulous Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe.

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Is Germany a Normal Country?

Good question.

One reason I read so much German history, especially military history, is because, frankly, Germany's not normal historically. The Fischer thesis specifically points to the origins of World War One in aggressive German nationalism and expansionism (shocking, frankly, in its similarities to German expansionism under the Nazi regime).

So, to that effect, here's Jeremy Cliffe, at the New Statesman, "Is Germany a normal country? Its citizens are finding that a painful question":

It needs to seek a balance: neither forgetting its past, nor succumbing to it.

Near my flat in Berlin, six cobblestone-sized plaques glint from the pavement. The first reads: “Here lived Maria Witelson, née Zuckermann. Born 1892. Deported 1942. Murdered in Majdanek.” Each of the others commemorates one of her five teenage children, who also died in that concentration camp near Lublin in Poland.

Along the street are similar plaques recalling the Holz family, deported one by one over a six-week period in 1943. Old Ernst died a week afterwards in Theresienstadt; Herbert and Lieselotte (née Cohn) in Auschwitz on unknown dates; young Willy in January 1945 on the death march to Buchenwald. Such Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones”, have been sprouting from German streets since 1992.

These monuments to the country’s terrible abnormality – and its admirable determination never to forget it – are not isolated examples. Every synagogue in Germany gets police protection. The mainstream media often boycotts far-right politicians. Every school pupil must visit a concentration camp. The forest of tombstone-like pillars constituting the Holocaust memorial in Berlin takes up an entire block.

This is the context in which Finis Germania (“The End of Germany”) recently appeared. Written by Rolf Peter Sieferle, a Heidelberg-based historian who committed suicide last September, this collection of essays asserts that a guilt-stricken Germany has swallowed the lie of its own abnormality and is determined to dissolve its identity through European federalism and open-border immigration. Most offensively, it compares Germans to the Jews; claiming that the former are now being collectively punished for the Holocaust as the latter were once collectively punished for the Crucifixion.

The book would have made little impact without its inclusion on June’s “non-fiction book of the month”, a list drawn up by a jury of broadcasters and writers. Since then, sales have soared. It is now top of Amazon Germany’s bestseller list. Berlin bookshops are out of copies.

Uproar has ensued. Johannes Saltzwedel, the journalist who proposed its recommendation more as provocation than endorsement, has withdrawn from the “non-fiction book of the month” jury. Finis Germania appears to have been excised from some bestseller lists. Dark rumours swirl that establishment forces have frustrated reprints by its publisher (a fringe outfit based in right-wing Saxony).

The saga tells a bigger story about today’s Germany. The country spent the immediate postwar years concentrating on reconstruction. But then the generation of 1968 radicals (including a then-leftist Sieferle) began to ask their parents about the recent past and upbraid them for smothering it; inspired partly by the 1967 book The Inability to Mourn by Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich. This generation dismantled what the Mitscherlichs called Germany’s “manic defences” against its past. It produced a culture of remembrance and guilt that still dominates the political class.

All of this is as welcome as it is visible on my Berlin street. Yet it also poses an unanswerable question that must nonetheless be answered: is Germany a normal country? That arose most urgently in 1990. The new, reunified Germany would be the largest country in the EU and by far the largest European economy. This begged questions about its military, economic and political role; about whether it should seek to lead or defer to others; about where the limits of its power and responsibilities should lie. Yet Helmut Kohl, the then chancellor, engineered no such debate. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas complained that: “Essential questions of political self-understanding – in particular the question of how we should understand the ‘normality’ of the approaching Berlin Republic – have remained open”.

This all marks German politics today. On Trump and Macron, on the environment and on the euro, the reunified country bequeathed by Kohl to successors such as Angela Merkel is increasingly expected to show leadership. Yet there is no consensus among its elites about what form that leadership should take, if any. Some urge idealism. Some advocate a rigorous focus on national interests. Most are for an ill-defined fudge. Few debate how the various imperatives might be balanced. Germany is as unclear as ever about the scope and limits of its own normalcy...

I'd say keep Germany tied down, just like it was tied down throughout the Cold War by U.S. power and multilateral institutions. Why take any chances, especially in an era like this.

Continue reading, in any case.

Women Surviving in Trump's White House

A good piece, at Politico, "In Trump's WhiteHouse, the women are the survivors."

Camila Romero

She's Argentine.

At Editorials Fashion Trends, "CAMI ROMERO BY ALEJANDRO BAUDUCCO."

Threat of Lightning Shuts Down U.S. Open of Surfing (VIDEO)

I don't blame authorities. There was lots of lightning when I was out with my son yesterday, although I'm sure surfing fans weren't pleased with the evacuation.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Kendall Jenner Frees the Nipple in Completely See-Through Top

One of my loyal readers sent this along yesterday, from the Daily Caller (of all places), "PHOTOS: Kendall Jenner Does it Again, Goes Braless in NYC in Totally See-Through Top."

And at the Sun U.K., "SHEER'S NOT SHY: Kendall Jenner goes wears a see-through top as she goes braless in latest racy outfit."

She's great. Love those long, lean legs, lol.

Emily Ratajkowski in Tropical Kauai (VIDEO)

Well, it's tropical alright, heh.

Here's the lovely Ms. Emily, for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Jackie Johnson's Hot Humid Thunderstorms Forecast

I was out with my young son this afternoon, over to the mall to pick up some video games at Game Stop. Driving through Santa Ana on the way back it started to rain, with some lightning as well. It was intense for a few minutes. Really tropical weather, and my son was cracking up, watching all the people trying to run and get out of the storm. It's unusual for summer.

And boy was it hot and humid. It was in the triple digits in parts of the San Fernando Valley.

What a day!

Here's the lovely Ms. Jackie with tomorrow's forecast, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912.

Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion

Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War.

Robert Leckie, None Died in Vain

At Amazon, Robert Leckie, None Died in Vain: The Saga of the American Civil War.

David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis

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Shelby Foote, The Civil War

The classic history, at Amazon, Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the American Civil War (Volumes 1-3 Box Set).

President Trump's War Against the Elites

I still don't think MSM types are getting it. It's not just President Trump. We're in a new age. A totally new era. Regular folks don't even care if you slam them for rejecting "the experts." Not a whit. The so-called experts are mostly leftists and almost always wrong.

Be that as it may, see Cathleen Decker, at LAT, "Analysis: Trump's war against elites and expertise":

When President Trump campaigned this spring at the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson, one part of his predecessor’s approach got a special endorsement.

“It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite. Does that sound familiar?" Trump asked to laughs from his audience.

When Trump ally and National Rifle Assn. President Wayne LaPierre teed off six weeks later on America’s greatest domestic threats, he cited not homegrown terrorists but what he termed “the three most dangerous voices in America: academic elites, political elites, and media elites.”

The rhetoric against elites came from two men who would seem to be card-carrying members of the club: LaPierre made more than $5 million in 2015, the most recent year for which his compensation was publicly released. Trump lived before his inauguration in a gold-plated home in the sky above New York’s Fifth Avenue, a billionaire’s luxurious domain.

Yet for Trump and his allies, a war on elites has been central to the campaign which put him in the presidency and has maintained the loyalty of his core voters. Trump has taken particular aim at entities that could counter his power, which has helped stoke the ardor of his political backers.

Among his targets so far: the government’s intelligence agencies, the media, foreign allies, the Department of Justice, establishment politicians, scientists and the Congressional Budget Office. The last has played a large role in raising questions about Republican proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare, leading to a furious White House assault on its competence.

Trump has refused to accept the judgment of intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. He has alleged, without proof and contrary to both Democratic and Republican officials in key states, that millions of illegal voters cast ballots last year. He has blamed vaccines for autism, despite the scientific debunking of that notion.

Excoriating elites “is classic populist language,” said Yale historian Beverly Gage. “Trump has taken it to a whole new level by not only attacking clueless elites but the entire idea of expertise.”

To voters listening for them, Trump’s anti-elitism signals have blared. As telling as his political and policy postures is his language — who else but Trump would angrily call his predecessor’s signature program “a big fat ugly lie” — and a perpetual sense of victimization.

“He’s a billionaire, and therefore a member of a certain type of elites,” Gage said. “But he’s also the guy from Queens rebelling against the know-it-all smarty pantses from Manhattan.”

Trump has used both specific insults and the specter of powerful and mysterious external forces — he often describes them as an undefined “they” — arrayed against common Americans, with him as chief defender...

See what I mean? This piece makes some good points, but it's otherwise dripping with disdain.

I don't know if Trump can be reelected again. The left will mount an all-out war on him and everything he stands for in 2020. But whatever happens, we're at the point of no return. Too much has changed. I'd say it's like a cultural cold war, and it's not neatly divided into "left and right." The people vs. the establishment is more like it, and perhaps only Bernie Sanders has the proper sense of it among folks on the Democrat side. The culture war, things like transgenders in the military, also plays large. I mean who else but leftist establishment elites would think this a good idea? And rejection of science? Only leftists reject science to push a degenerate socio-political agenda. It's disgusting.

So, if anyone is ready and willing to stand up to the left's warmongering political onslaught come 2020, it's The Donald.

More at the link, FWIW.

Jack S. Levy and John A. Vasquez, eds., The Outbreak of the First World War

At great collaboration between political scientists and historians.

At Amazon, Jack S. Levy and John A. Vasquez, eds., The Outbreak of the First World War: Structure, Politics, and Decision-Making.

Venezuela Heads for Civil War (VIDEO)

From Mary Anastasia O'Grady, at WSJ, "The regime has rifles and armored vehicles, but the people have numbers and anger":

Forget all you’ve heard about dialogue in Venezuela between the regime and the opposition. Hungry, hurting Venezuelans are done talking. The country is in the early stages of civil war. Sunday’s Cuban-managed electoral power play was the latest provocation.

In my column two weeks ago, “How Cuba Runs Venezuela,” I failed to mention Havana’s 2005 takeover of the Venezuelan office that issues national identity cards and passports. It was a Castro-intelligence coup, carried out with then-President Hugo Chávez’s permission. The move handed Havana the national Rolodex necessary to spy on Venezuelans and surreptitiously colonize the country. Islamic extremists received Venezuelan passports to give them false cover when crossing borders. Regime supporters got the papers they need to vote under more than one identity.

This is something to keep in mind when Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro reports the results of Sunday’s election for representatives to draft a new constitution. In polls, some 80% of Venezuelans oppose Mr. Maduro’s “constituent assembly.” But the opposition boycotted Sunday’s election because they know Cuba is running things, that voter rolls are corrupted, and that there is no transparency in the operation of electronic voting machines.

Opposition leaders in Caracas are still trying to use peaceful means to unseat Mr. Maduro. Last week they orchestrated an effective 48-hour national strike and on Friday another day of demonstrations.

But grass-roots faith and hope in a peaceful solution has been lost. One symptom of this desperation is the mass exodus under way. On Tuesday the Panam Post reported that “more than 26,000 people crossed the border into Colombia Monday, July 26, according to the National Director of Migration in [the Colombian city of] Cúcuta.”

Venezuelan applications for asylum in the U.S. were up 160% last year, making Venezuelans No. 1 among asylum seekers to the U.S. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there were 27,000 Venezuelan asylum seekers world-wide in 2016. By mid-July this year there were already 50,000.

Last week the National Guard arrested and badly beat violinist Wuilly Arteaga, who has become a national symbol of peace. Many of those fleeing say they fear that after Sunday the regime crackdown will intensify. Some of those staying behind have already begun to launch counteroffensives. This provides the regime an excuse for increasing repression, yet there is a growing sense that violence is the only remaining option.

The regime has the armored vehicles, the high-powered rifles, and the SWAT gear. But the population has the numbers and the anger. It also may increasingly have support from dissident government forces.

Consider what happened in the municipality of Mario Briceño Iragorry in the state of Aragua earlier this month, when the pro-government mayor and the regime’s paramilitary, known as colectivos, began looting shops that were closed during a one-day national strike.

Eyewitness testimonies sent to me by a source in Caracas describe how townspeople tried to defend the shops. The mayor brought in paramilitary reinforcements. But the town was saved when the judicial police arrived from the state capital of Maracay. According to the Venezuelan daily El Nacional, they arrested the mayor, who was armed, and “many” colectivos.

More.