"E Pluribus Unum", those are the very first three words in the dissertation of Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester von und zu Guttenberg (yes, those are all his names). K.T. zu Guttenberg is the current conservative German Minister of Defense. 

It is still unknown if the use of those three words were meant as a hidden joke by the ghostwriter, or if Guttenberg himself plagiarized them. Whatever. They and the first two paragraphs of the introduction to the dissertation, the part an author usually writes very carefully and without quoting anyone else, were copied from a piece by another author in a German conservative newspaper without being marked as a citation, an academical no-no.

Copied were also most of the other 408 pages in the dissertation, which was supposed to be a comparison of the American and European constitution forming process. The cooperative project I was involved in over the last week, GuttenPlag (in German), has now found not-attributed quotes on some 80% of its 408 pages. In total some 40-50% (we are still counting) of all lines are from not-attributed sources. If one adds the correctly attributed sources in the paper to that, there is little left the author or his ghostwriter wrote himself.

The current scandal started after a law professor was asked by a professional journal to write a review of Guttenberg's published dissertation. He immediately found five not-attributed quotes and last Wednesday went public with it. The same day a collaborative investigative internet project was born as a Google docs project by some current doctoral candidates. When the finds increased, the crowd sourcing moved to a wiki-format. Within four days a hundred or so people found hundreds of wrongly or not attributed quotes. The media jumped to the ever increasing results GuttenPlag published.

Guttenberg, after first calling the allegations of plagiarism "absurd", was forced to retreat further and further.

Yesterday the University of Bayreuth, his alma mater, revoked Guttenberg's Ph.D. qualification and he lost his academic title. (Over the last years the University had received about a million from Guttenberg family owned companies.) A debate in the Bundestag called for his resignation. He admitted to have "unconsciencly" also used four copyrighted papers from the Bundestag Research Service in his dissertation. An hour later two addition BRS papers were found to have been used by him word by word, unattributed of course. He is obviously still lying.

But as Guttenberg is the only really popular conservative politician, Chancellor Merkel is still backing him. Today he is still Minister of Defense though and we need to keep the pressure up to get him kicked out of office.

Why is that important you might ask.

Guttenberg, age 38, is the candidate of the U.S. neo-conservatives in Germany. He is a member of the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations and the Kissinger affiliated Atlantic-Bridge. Guttenberg was born into a rich family with a big name and centuries of history. Part of a blue-blood bavarian nobility some people still look up to. There are also a pretty wife and children, the now revoked Ph.D., summa cum laude of course, and very good relations with the equivalent of Rupert Murdoch in Germany, the Springer family and its daily "Bild" – the tabloid with the biggest readership in Europe.

Guttenberg is a very good public orator, probably even better than the young Tony Blair. His public strategy is comparable to Sarah Palin's. He is playing the nice anti-elite guy from next door, a mother-in-law's dream. "I am happy I do not have be in that ghastly political Berlin today, but can be here with you in your beautiful whatever town," is his opening line when out to stump. He speaks of truthfulness, honesty and conservative values.

At the same time he has no real political principles. In all of the four major decisions he made as defense minister, he changed his public stated opinion by 180 degree within weeks or days and in one case within hours. Whenever there was a problem, he found some scapegoats to fire.

But the people still like him. Even with all newspapers left to right, except Springer's Bild, and all commentators pressing for his resignation over the dissertation plagiarism and the related lies, recent polls still show him as still having majority support.

Guttenberg is a dangerous man.

People in the states may be used to such politicians and their tactics, Germans are not. Guttenberg is bringing in a populist style which the country and its politicians purposefully avoided for the last several decades. History teaches that Germans falling for a lying populist con man does not end well. Neither for Germany nor for any neighboring country.

So please excuse me for being off for another few days. The German population still has to learn how bad the guy really is – a slow process. We are now working on a conclusive report which will have all the reviewed numbers and graphs the press likes to spread about this issue. The current target date for publishing that is Monday. Until then I'll drop in once a while but will likely do little posting.