• US-Bürgerrechtsaktivist Ellsberg - "Obama täuscht die Öffentlichkeit" (German)
• The Economist - Eight questions for Daniel Ellsberg
• Obama gives key agriculture post to Monsanto man
  Yeah right. Monsanto! You may know them from ”Monsanto - mit Gift und Genen”. Watch it if you did not see it. And it gets even worse.
• Obama Outdoes Bush in Saudi Arabia¹⁾

…and so on. You will find tons of comparable facts. I write this posting because I find it very strange how popular Obama is here in Germany. He is not our president, we can't elect the US president and most people here don't know elementary facts about his actions. But they love him. And even if he would be the American Messiah, he wouldn't be “ours”. I think a more neutral attitude would be appropriate as common German citizen.

However. I need to know where I stand. And that's the fail regarding Obama. You just can't believe his blathering, pious platitudes. He often says something and does the opposite afterwards. This is especially true regarding the protection of whistle-blowers. Daniel Ellsberg – the one who released the Pentagon Papers (a top-secret study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War) – says something really disillusioning in the interview I linked above (emphasis by me):

This administration has shown more eagerness to prosecute leaks than any other administration in our history. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama has now, with the prosecution of Bradley Manning, indicted as many people for whistleblowing or leaks as all previous presidents put together.

In 1.5 years. Really nice, isn't it? All of this has nothing to do with “change we can believe in”. Even if someone else would not be better: people expected something else from Obama and many ones are gutted about his actions now. This is also the difference between him and his predecessor George Bush.

Just my two cents.