Short on space, Germany is housing refugees in hotels, forests and stadiums

Cities have started rejecting asylum claims as growing violence in Iraq and Syria threatens to make a refugee housing crisis even worse.
By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — High atop a Berlin hostel, an unknown asylum seeker believed to be African grips tightly to a steel railing with one hand. Every few minutes, he grins broadly and capers a bit as he calls down to a knot of television journalists on the street — gathered here because of earlier reports that refugees facing expulsion from the capital were threatening to jump.

“Ich bin Berliner!” he shouts, channeling John F. Kennedy. “I want to stay in Berlin!”

The 28 Guertelstrasse hostel was converted into housing for refugees in April as part of a deal to convince asylum seekers to abandon a tented camp in Berlin’s Oranienplatz. They had been living illegally there, in protest against the German government's policies, for more than a year.

But since city authorities ordered 108 mostly African asylum seekers who had claims pending in other German states to vacate their accomodations here, the building has morphed into the latest flashpoint for Germany's refugee problem — with a handful of diehards refusing to leave the rooftop overnight Tuesday.

“In Hamburg, legislators have already proposed building makeshift villages out of shipping containers.”

Historically committed to providing humanitarian relief to the victims of foreign conflicts, Germany has absorbed more refugees from strife in Africa and the Middle East than any other nation in Europe.

But as violence within Iraq and Syria heat up, a housing shortage has prompted new debate over just how many asylum seekers the country can take in, says Claudia Beck, Germany spokeswoman for the Christian aid organization Caritas.

“The situation is already very, very hard for the people, and now there will be much more people trying to come to Europe, and then to Germany,” says Beck, who believes her country must rise to the challenge.

But louder voices are beginning to disagree.

In 2013, Germany was surprised by an unexpected wave of 110,000 requests for asylum — more than five times the number it received in 2006, the low point since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees now predicting 2014 requests may rise as high as 200,000, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere this week proposed a strict limit on the refugees the country agrees to accept.

“Whoever is not politically persecuted and needs no protection should not be granted asylum and must leave the country,” de Maiziere said in an interview with a German newspaper published Saturday.

Followed closely by this week’s rejection of asylum claims, the statement has sparked fears a deportation wave is coming for refugees like Haki, from Chad, who lived in a tent in Oranienplatz for more than a year.

“They start to deport people house by house, one by one,” says Haki, who declines to give his last name because his asylum application is still pending.

Some of those who arrive in Germany are automatically considered refugees based on the circumstances they have fled. Others aren't officially recognized as refugees until they've been granted asylum.

Public and government support remains strong for those fleeing conflict or political persecution. But the financial burden of the influx has already pushed some Germans to question whether policies should distinguish war refugees from economic migrants, says Said, an asylum seeker from Ghana.

Germans are more than prepared to welcome refugees from Iraq and Syria, he says, declining to give his surname. But they have less sympathy for Africans who flee places like Libya if they hold passports from peaceful, if poverty-stricken, countries.

“I've tried Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark,” he says. “This is my last stop.”

Expulsion of those deemed to be economic migrants may be the only answer, argues de Maiziere, though doing so could prove very difficult.

Already, cash-strapped cities across Germany have been forced to adopt extreme measures to accommodate the stream of refugees making their way here from Italy — where since the beginning of the year the Italian navy has rescued nearly 100,000 people fleeing violence and poverty in countries like Eritrea, Somalia and Syria.

In Hamburg, legislators have already proposed billeting refugees on decommissioned cruise ships moored in the Elbe River and building makeshift villages out of shipping containers, for example.

The city houses about 10,000 refugees in more than 60 locations, and spent around 300 million euros ($396 million) for accommodation and counseling in 2014. But it's struggling to find space for more, says Marcel Schweitzer, spokesman for the Hamburg Department of Labor, Welfare and Integration.

“We believe the refugee policy is a national duty. It’s unbelievable that Hamburg and other cities have to house refugees in containers or tents, while houses are pulled down because of a lack of tenants in other German states,” Schweitzer wrote in an email.

The city of Cologne recently purchased a four-star hotel to convert into semi-permanent housing for its asylum seekers, after being forced to rent rooms for an overflow of some 800 people in 2013.

Other cities like Duisburg, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, have been forced toerect tented camps in forests, stadiums and tennis courts that have drawn criticism for poor conditions.

As of Wednesday afternoon, police were still negotiating with exhausted Berlin rooftop refugees after a 24-hour vigil.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140827/iraq-syria-violence-refugee-housing-crisis-germany

Merkel heads to Ukraine as support builds for tough sanctions against Russia

Not even looming recession appears to be stopping Germany's rethink on Moscow.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — The last time Angela Merkel visited Kyiv, she was there to explain why she'd opposed a US initiative to put Ukraine on a path to join NATO.

That prospect was provoking fury in Russia, which invaded neighboring Georgia over that country’s aspiration to do the same.

This Saturday, Merkel’s agenda promises to be very different.

A longtime proponent of engagement rather than confrontation with Russia, she will meet with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday in a clear sign of Germany's mounting support for his country's European ambitions.

The difference between now and six years ago is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s betrayal of Merkel’s trust by breaking promises to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine, after he annexed Crimea earlier this year and followed with support for pro-Moscow rebels fighting an insurgency in the country’s east.

The chancellor’s talks will focus on Ukraine’s security situation and explore “concrete possibilities to support Ukraine in the current crisis,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel's official spokesman, said Tuesday.

Last week, negotiations in Germany between foreign ministers failed to end the crisis as Russia reportedly refused to stop or even acknowledge its support for rebel fighters in Crimea.

Merkel will travel to Kyiv just days before Poroshenko and other European leaders will meetwith Putin in Minsk on Tuesday.


In that context, the visit is perhaps the strongest signal yet that concerns about Germany’s economy — slowing thanks to European Union sanctions against Russia — won’t derail the dramatic transformation underway in German-Russian relations, says Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are in the process of a fundamental change in how we see Russia,” he said in a telephone interview. “You have to understand the policy of the last 20-25 years has failed.”

That policy, marked by regular personal interactions between Merkel and Putin, was intended to nudge and cajole the former communist state to adopt democratic reforms through ever-greater economic ties.

But as the Ukraine crisis has escalated, especially after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Merkel has steadily taken an ever-stronger stance and now appears to have won support for broad economic sanctions from the once-reluctant German business community.

In May, the chief executives of BASF, Siemens, Volkswagen and Adidas were lobbyingaggressively to prevent stiff sanctions against Russia.

But even as the latest economic data revealed deep cracks in the European recovery last week, the tenor of comments from the business sector, along with public opinion, has begun to change.

The economic data has driven home the idea that stagnation in investment driven by uncertainty in Ukraine is more damaging than any direct blow to trade with Russia, says the Kiel Institute's Klaus-Juergen Gern.

“At the moment, the feeling is that without some kind of sanctions, the Russians would not give in and the crisis will go on for a very long time,” he said.

At the same time, a recent poll conducted by Infratest Dimap on behalf of broadcaster ARD showed that 70 percent of ordinary Germans now favor tougher sanctions, and that 82 percent no longer view Russia as a trustworthy economic partner.

Acting on such views is coming with a price.

Official data show Germany's economy contracted 0.2 percent in the second quarter, which ended June 30.

The Federal Statistics Office warned that the economy was “losing momentum” even before the impact of current sanctions against Russia.

And the German Chambers of Commerce recently said the economy is on “a dangerous path,” with a projected $15-billion shortfall in exports expected to put some 100,000 German jobs at risk.

That makes recession almost inevitable. Ongoing strife in relations with Russia could also do irreparable damage to key sectors of the legendary Mittelstand — the small and medium-sized export firms that drive Germany's export-oriented economy — says Monika Hollacher of the German Engineering Federation.

“The mere threat of sanctions has already led to German companies losing many commissions,” she wrote in a recent article. “Sanctions will only accelerate this negative development. Long-term supply relationships and mutual trust between trading partners will potentially be damaged.”

In the past, German machine companies could stave off cheaper Asian competitors thanks to longstanding business relationships and the sterling reputation of German engineering.

However, now those advantages have been virtually eliminated, says Alexander Loktev, a sales agent for German engineering companies in Russia.

“We've already received inquiries from some customers asking us to look for machines from Asian producers,” he said.

It’s unclear how long Germany’s commitment to sanctions will survive as the economic bite drags on.

But Meister, the foreign relations expert, believes even recession is unlikely to reverse the shift in German policy.

“I think that everybody now understands that Russia changed the European order,” Meister said, “and we need to show them that it is unacceptable.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140821/merkel-poroshenko-putin-ukraine-russia-germany-sanctions

Foley execution boosts European support for intervention in Iraq

A video of the American journalist’s beheading by Islamist militants appears to be having the opposite of its intended effect.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — European leaders reacted to the execution of an American journalist with shock and horror Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “horrified” by the video depicting James Foley's beheading by members of the militant group Islamic State, or IS, released on YouTube on Tuesday.

Foley was freelancing for GlobalPost and other outlets in Syria when he disappeared nearly two years ago.

The German government extended its “deepest sympathies” to the Foley family, spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday.

“This is a barbaric act that plays on fear,” spokesman for the French government Stephane Le Foll told reporters.

Far from intimidating European leaders, however, Foley's beheading appears to be galvanizing support for military intervention in Iraq, with France, Germany and Italy deepening their commitment to supporting Kurdish rebels fighting IS.

"I think we are in the most serious international situation since 2001. ... I will therefore propose an initiative on security in Iraq and the fight against Islamic State, from September," French President Francois Hollande told Le Monde.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany can now “imagine providing further equipment, including weapons” to Kurdish forces — doubling down on a commitment to provide non-lethal military supplies that was already seen as a departure from Germany's usual reluctance to engage in foreign conflicts.


A similar commitment came from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who made a one-day visit to Iraq on Wednesday.

"Europe must be in places like Iraq where democracy is endangered," he said in Baghdad.

Italy is prepared to provide light arms and ammunition for self-defense, as well as logistical support for weapons supplies, Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said.

However, Germany’s reaction is perhaps the most significant.

Although Steinmeier and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen have been pushing for greater involvement in the fight against IS for the past week, a recent poll conducted by the Forsa Institute before Foley's execution suggested that only one in three Germans favored weapons deliveries.

More from GlobalPost: Britain searching for Foley killer

Judging from the emotions expressed by ordinary Germans and in the German media, however, that could be set to change.

“At the moment Germans see ISIS as a barbaric, terroristic warrior tribe, in a way, shedding blood everywhere,” said Alexander Buehler, a German reporter who has covered the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria. He was referring to IS by one of its previous names.

In an uncharacteristic editorial for the German press, the deputy editor of Die Welt calledFoley's execution “a declaration of war on Western civilization,” and called not only for Germany to aid in the fight against IS but also for the institution of sanctions against countries that allegedly provide them with financial support, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140820/foley-execution-boosts-european-support-intervention-iraq

Hungary may be in the EU, but its leader believes his country should be more like Putin’s Russia

Viktor Orban steps up his attacks on liberal democracy.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)

BUDAPEST, Hungary — At a beer garden on the campus of Eotvos Lorand University during a lovely summer evening, a group of young graduates grows passionate when the conversation turns to Viktor Orban.

Locked in conflict with the European Union since he took office in 2010, the country's populist right-wing prime minister openly believes Hungary should no longer model itself on the liberal democracies of Western Europe.

It should emulate “illiberal” countries such as Singapore, China and Russia instead, he said late last month. Last week, he condemned EU sanctions against Moscow over its stoking of military conflict in Ukraine.

Such criticism has horrified educated, urban Hungarians like Marcsi, a young blond woman who, like her companions, asked that her surname not be published.

“Now we're mentioned in the same breath with Belarus and Russia,” she says. “If this government did nothing else, it’s ruined our reputation in the rest of the world.”

Orban has capitalized on his Fidesz Party's two-thirds majority in parliament to centralize control over democratic institutions since his first term began in 2010. But some believe his open declaration of war on liberal democracy presages a new level in what they say is a drive to embed cronyism in government and quash dissent.

“This is a programmatic declaration that the government would like to further weaken the system of checks and balances,” says Peter Kreko of the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital.

Orban came under fire during his first term for weakening the independence of the judiciary. Critics alleged he used punitive taxes and other questionable legal measures to target businesses owned by foreign companies and his political opponents.


He also faced international censure for amending the constitution to make it easier for his party to win a second two-thirds majority in April 2014.

He's since continued to move in the same direction.

In June, Orban enacted a tax on advertising revenue — not profit, as is more typical — that the EU criticized as an attack on the free press.

He also launched an investigation into foreign-funded nonprofit organizations. The probe’s targets say it’s designed to threaten their autonomy.

Viktor Szigetvari, a politician who campaigned for the opposition alliance in the recent election, is unequivocal about Orban's inspiration.

“It's Putinism at its best,” he says, referring to Russia’s authoritarian President Vladimir Putin.

The government denies the accusations, saying none of its measures is malicious.

Officials argue that the constitutional changes were needed to eliminate political gridlock. They say the advertising tax and similar measures are required for filling the country's depleted coffers and protect people from predatory pricing.

And they say the probe of nonprofits stems from allegations that funds were improperly diverted into campaign financing for a small Fidesz rival called “Politics Can Be Different.”

Zoltan Kovacs, Orban's international spokesman, denies there are grounds for comparisons between Orban and Putin, let alone Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

“This is a political game,” he says. “It's very cheap and easy to use terms like these. We never crossed the democratic boundaries with any measure.”

But critics point to what they say is growing evidence to the contrary.

Veronika Mora, who heads the Okotars Foundation, responsible for distributing grants from Norway, says the government office that launched the original probe into NGOs has no jurisdiction over the administration of funds under a bipartisan agreement between Hungary and Norway.

A secondary embezzlement investigation launched by the Orban-controlled public prosecutor's office is little more than harassment, she says.

“If we lived in a country of law and order, we'd have no reason to fear because we've done nothing wrong,” she says.

The anti-corruption advocacy group Transparency International draws a direct line between the removal of checks on government power and an increase in crony capitalism.

Although the extent of corruption may not have grown — preceding governments were no angels, either — tailor-made laws have entrenched and legalized it, says Miklos Ligeti, Transparency’s head of legal affairs in Hungary.

“It's an exaggeration when it's perceived as a dictatorship,” he says of the state. “But the tendencies and trends are very worrying.”

Hungary raised no objections from the EU when it nationalized retail sales of tobacco following a model used in Austria.

A year later, however, franchise licenses were distributed to Fidesz Party loyalists.

In 2013, the government nationalized the country's largest cooperative savings bank only toreprivatize it again a year later through a single-bidder sale to a consortium of investors that included the man appointed to run the nationalization process in the first place.

The system uses punishments as well as rewards, says a Western businessman based in Hungary.

The tax on advertising revenue, for instance, was structured so that only a single media company was hit with a whopping 40 percent tax bill — a channel called RTL Klub owned by the German conglomerate Bertelsmann.

Similarly, a special retail tax on companies with revenues of more than $2.2 million bypassedHungarian-owned CBA — a grocery chain that competes with companies like Britain’s Tesco — because its stores were run as individual franchises.

Sources of persecution can run the gamut from the taxman to the health inspector, according to the businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from officials.

“At one point, a client company had 65 different government investigations going on at one time,” he says.

More from GlobalPost: Amid fears of a Russian invasion, Ukrainians keep pushing for political reform

None of that may be evident to visitors in swish, stylish Budapest, where tequila bars, luxury boutiques and elegant cafes stand among majestic bridges and cathedrals.

But back at the campus beer garden, dismay pervades the jokes about state-owned TV broadcasts, a new degree program for shepherds, rules requiring college graduates to stay in Hungary and other echoes of the order that existed here before communism fell in 1990.

Most here expect Orban’s centralization to continue for the foreseeable future.

Fruzsina, a young woman in a pink, sleeveless blouse who works for a foreign firm, says that gives educated Hungarians a special responsibility: “We can't give up on the idea that we still live in a liberal state.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140815/hungary-eu-viktor-orban-russia

Europe has a puppy mafia problem

Open borders are creating canine refugees.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)


BERLIN, Germany — In a sprawling animal shelter on the outskirts of Berlin, Beate Kaminski scoops up a tiny, bug-eyed puppy called Luna and plunks her down on her office table.

Eight inches tall and a foot long from nose to tail, handbag-sized Luna is the kind of “designer dog” flooding into Germany from dodgy puppy mills across Europe.

Like Luna, many are abandoned on the street or dumped at facilities like this one when they fall sick from one of the myriad canine diseases that can usually be prevented by mandatory vaccinations.

Evidence suggests there's an organized “puppy mafia” behind the trade. But Europe's open borders, web-based sales and a reluctance to file criminal charges are making it almost impossible to stop.

“Basically, anyone can breed puppies,” says Kaminski, whose large-framed glasses give her the air of a librarian.

“The puppy mill problem in the US is bigger than here, but we're in danger of facing the same issue because of our open borders.”

The largest shelter in Europe, Tierheim Berlin, or “Animal Shelter Berlin,” is an enormous concrete compound. Designed by the architect who built Chancellor Angela Merkel's residence, it houses monkeys used for research in East Germany before reunification, abandoned and confiscated farm animals, exotic lizards, parrots, rabbits, and just about every animal you can name — along with 800 cats and 300 dogs.

With an annual budget of around $10 million, the shelter houses animals indefinitely if no one adopts them, resorting to euthanasia only in the case of terminal illnesses that cause undue suffering.

Many of the animals have gone through hell before getting here.


No one knows how many puppies and kittens are transported illegally into Germany each year. But activists like Kaminski say highway accidents and routine traffic stops revealing cars and trucks loaded with animals from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — as well as a steady flow of sick and abandoned pets — hint at a booming trade.

“The puppy mill problem in the US is bigger than here, but we're in danger of facing the same issue because of our open borders,” she says.

In one case, Autobahn police and animal control officers recovered more than 100 pug, bulldog, husky and Saint Bernard puppies after a truck from Slovakia crashed near the city of Schifferstadt in Southwestern Germany.

Puppies were stacked in boxes in a closed truck bed reeking of urine and feces, conditions a horrified veterinary department official said surely reflected animal rights violations across the border.

Nevertheless, police maintained there were no grounds for filing criminal charges in Germany, whatever conditions the pups might have been raised in.

“From a purely legal standpoint, there is no actionable offense because the animals have valid vaccination certificates and the necessary documents,” police spokeswoman Simone Eisenbarth told Germany's Bild newspaper. “Unfortunately, our hands are tied.”



Newly adopted shelter puppies in Bucharest, Romania. (AFP/Getty Images)

The problem isn’t unique to Germany.

The truck caught on the Autobahn was actually headed to Belgium. A similar case netted a major importer in Luxembourg last year.

In Britain, a recent Channel Four documentary revealed that the relaxation of the country's once-stringent quarantine laws with the adoption of the EU's pet passport system has resulted in a massive increase in puppy smuggling there.

The impotence of the authorities in Germany — where regulations governing the treatment of animals are among the toughest in the world — highlights the difficulty of stopping the cruel trade.

The driver in the Autobahn case was fined nearly $30,000 to cover the costs of rehabilitating and quarantining the pups, many of which were injured or sick. But such hefty fines are rare and the chances of being caught with direct evidence of mistreatment remain slim, meaning profits still outweigh the risks.

Public outrage is also fleeting, says the Berlin animal shelter's Kaminski.

“You have headlines for one or two days and then the incident is forgotten,” she says.

Still, the country's animal rights activists may be making at least some headway.

In May, Germany’s federal food and agriculture authorities held the country's first roundtable discussion of the issue, focusing on possible new measures to combat the trade, including regulations that would require Germany-based retailers to obtain permits before importing any animals.

For Kaminski, there's an even easier solution.

“If you want a puppy,” she says, “go to a shelter.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140806/europe-germany-puppy-mafia-animal-smuggling

Scientists revolt against one of Europe’s most ambitious research projects

Dissenters are threatening to boycott a $1.6 billion attempt to simulate the brain’s workings.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, August 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — If it’s true, as the saying goes, that politics in academia are especially vicious because the stakes are so low, raising the ante doesn’t always seem to improve matters. At least that’s what an ongoing revolt by researchers against one of Europe’s most ambitious scientific projects appears to show.

With $1.6 billion in funding and hundreds of researchers from across the continent, the European Union's Human Brain Project (HBP) is attempting to simulate the workings of the human brain using big data systems. It represents the EU's grandest undertaking in science since the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) completed its search for the so-called “God particle.”

Like that experiment, which succeeded in 2013 — and the sequencing of the human genome a decade ago — the Human Brain Project is addressing one of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science. And it promises huge rewards.

But last month, more than 150 neuroscientists signed an open letter to the European Commission demanding a new, more transparent review of the project, suggesting it’s “not on course” and that its funding should be parceled out to smaller neuroscience projects as individual grants.

Since the letter was published, the number of signatories has grown to more than 600.

They argue that autocratic leadership and flaws in the project's design have doomed it to failure, and they've threatened a boycott if something doesn't change.

In an official response, the European Commission said that it welcomes debate, and some HBP members say they're open to discussions.

Led by Zachary Mainen, director of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme in Portugal, the dissenters say that’s a promising sign.


“There's more going on between people in the European Commission and the HBP than there was before all this,” Mainen said in an interview.

Nevertheless, both sides have become increasingly entrenched since the squabble became public.

The HBP leadership points out that the project was selected only after a lengthy review process by a panel of 25 renowned experts in the field. Raising objections now, they say, is like complaining about a sports referee’s credentials only after he's ruled against your side.

The dissenters insist that review process was meaningless because the panel’s members are anonymous, their deliberations made behind closed doors. The protesters are unofficially calling for the project leader, Henry Markram — a professor of neuroscience based in Switzerland — to be replaced.

In a sign of how frayed tempers have become, the project’s co-director Karlheinz Meier, a University of Heidelberg professor who specializes in computer modeling of neural circuits, says he resents the opposition's methods more than their arguments.

“I don't like this kind of Facebook style which has been chosen, to just click on the letter and say I like it or I don't like it,” he said of the open letter. “This is not the way science works.”

There are real scientific differences, too.

In what Markram has described as “a paradigm shift” for neuroscience, he hopes to gather the vast amount of existing data about various neural structures in order to plug into a yet-to-be-developed supercomputer. It would run thousands of statistical simulations to determine the most likely connections and interactions between them.

If it works, the method could “reverse engineer” a map of the brain's circuitry that would otherwise take millions of conventional experiments to achieve, he says.

To further that focus, the HBP in May slashed the arm of the project devoted to cognitive neuroscience — the more theoretical study of the connections between neurons and higher mental processes such as decision-making and memory. The open letter’s signatories say that’s turned the project into a computing exercise, drastically lowering its odds of teaching us much about the brain.

They argue that simulations alone will never be enough to provide an understanding of how the firing of neurons translates into thoughts and feelings. Instead, they advocate constant interplay between the theoreticians who look at brain function from the top down — from the perspective of behavior — and those who look at it from the bottom up, from the perspective of neurons.

Alexandre Pouget, a neuroscientist from the University of Geneva, says without contributions from both sides, it would be astounding if the project achieves its goal of building an artificial human brain within ten years.

“I would be blown away and would probably retire,” he said.

More from GlobalPost: Putin doesn't look like he's about to give in

Markram and his supporters counter by saying that's exactly the same kind of nay-saying that was once leveled at the human genome project, the Hubble space telescope, the CERN supercollider and other successful scientific collaborations during their early stages.

Co-director Meier says scientists already have plenty of theoretical understanding to get started on the project as it’s currently envisioned.

“If we would wait until we've understood the brain, then we wouldn’t have to simulate it anymore,” he said.

Whether or not the European Commission agrees remains to be seen.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140731/human-brain-project-european-commission

Welcome to Silicon Allee

You read it right. Berlin may finally be living up to its hopes of becoming Europe’s startup hub.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — The low thrum of ambient electronica music pulses through a four-floor walkup in the hip central neighborhood of Prenzlauerberg as dozens of young programmers stick on nametags and swap stories.

Welcome to what locals are calling Germany’s Silicon Alley, where the code junkies have come for a Startup Grind event.

It's a pretty typical meet-and-geek. Software code is the primary topic of conversation. One young man with a ponytail shouts on his cell phone as another in a hoodie furtively dives into a spread of canapes before the buffet table is officially open. There are only a handful of women.

The big news is that this kind of event is taking place in the German capital almost every night.

Despite cheap rents and a reputation as one of the world's coolest cities, Berlin has so far failed to live up to its goal of becoming Europe's startup hub. But that may finally be changing thanks to a rapid growth in funding, a new drive to attract foreign talent and a burst of interest from industry giants like Google, say insiders like Marco Brenner, who moved here a year ago to found a startup.

“We need to grow some meaningful businesses in Berlin,” he says confidently, looking more like a PR executive dressed in his blazer instead of the usual hoodies or T-shirts. “Then the money will follow.”

Berlin's startup scene could create as many as 100,000 jobs by 2020, according to a recent report by the global consultancy McKinsey & Co.

Although the city still lags behind competitors like London when it comes to infrastructure — partly because Germany's conservative investors have long made it difficult to raise capital — the city has some of the right ingredients, including a low cost base and a hip image that helps attract top talent.


Earlier this month, Google unveiled a mammoth new startup incubator known as “Factory,” where veterans from Google for Entrepreneurs and Twitter will mentor company founders.

A 16,000 square foot space carved out of an abandoned brewery that will eventually employ around 500 people, it represents a big vote of confidence from the world's most successful internet company.

And while German venture capitalists remain more conservative than their counterparts in Silicon Valley, the amount of money available for startups has increased dramatically.

Over the past year, Berlin-based tech startups have raised over $650 million, more than three times the amount generated the previous year and more than six times the amount raised the year before that, according to venture capital database CB Insights.

Founders of some of the city's more promising startups — such as the audiofile sharing service SoundCloud, the academic social networking company ResearchGate and collaborative video-editing software maker FlavourSys — say Berlin's shortcomings can sometimes be advantages.

The city’s hip reputation attracts software engineers interested in the intersection of technology and creative projects at the heart of companies like SoundCloud. The lower level of activity here also makes it easier to afford and retain talented people than it would be in more advanced startup hubs.

Starting out here allowed FlavourSys to fly under the radar as the company developed collaborative software that enables television company video editors to work on files simultaneously from different locations.

Even though the company’s target market was always the US — which now accounts for 80 percent of its business — FlavourSys booked the National Geographic channel as its first customer before anyone in the software world had an inkling of what it was doing.

That happened at an industry convention in Las Vegas.

“It was amazing,” said FlavourSys co-founder Marco Stahl on the rooftop of the company's converted-apartment headquarters. “There were crowds of people, 20, 30, 40 people standing there watching demos. Then National Geographic came along and said, 'We want to buy this!'”

For a company that two weeks earlier had no website or printed business cards, that was a big deal.

ResearchGate co-founder and CEO Ijad Madisch has a similar story.

More from GlobalPost: Belgium could be headed for World Cup fame

Billed somewhat dismissively as “Facebook for scientists,” the company aims to break traditional boundaries that often keep academic research cloistered in ivory towers and exclude scientists from the developing world. When Madisch first came up with the idea six years ago, he found the world-weary capital of academia Boston too jaded to bite.

Berlin was different. When Madisch moved ResearchGate here in 2010, fifteen years after Jeff Bezos had launched Amazon, copycats had attracted programmers and created a nascent ecosystem for e-commerce startups, but little else. However, Madisch says it created a hunger to do something more interesting.

As a result, it was comparatively easy for ResearchGate to attract top developers, doctors and scientists.

“Everyone here is hungry to work on something big,” Madisch says. “That puts Berlin at an advantage to Silicon Valley.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140703/germany-berlin-google-factory-silicon-allee-startups

The Grand Budapest Hotel is actually a department store in Germany, and it’s about to become much grander

A German entrepreneur aims to revitalize a moribund town in the former East by renovating an Art Nouveau icon.
By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

GOERLITZ, Germany — Standing on a ladder, workman Roland Freund dips his trowel into a bucket of mortar and carefully smoothes a wall under a molding. The work is painstaking and the air choked with dust, but he’s happy to be here.

That’s because he’s taking part in a project locals hope will herald the revival of their town in the former East Germany, which industrial decline and an exodus of people has left depopulated and depressed since German reunification in 1990.

Expectations are high because this is no ordinary construction project.

Recently made famous as the setting for Wes Anderson's film “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” the Goerlitz department store is a majestic, airy structure with a beautiful leaded glass dome over the atrium, striking brass chandeliers and a grand staircase leading to the balconied terraces of the upper floors. When it opened in 1913, the Art Nouveau establishment rivaled London's Selfridges and Berlin's Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe).

Recently facing a battle for survival, however, the store is now in the midst of a $30-million facelift financed by entrepreneur Winfried Stoecker, the founder of a multimillion-dollar medical technology company based in nearby Luebeck.

He wants to leverage Goerlitz's growing reputation as a movie-shooting location to help rejuvenate the town, which is among the poorest in Germany.

“This is crucial for the revitalization of the downtown. But it is also a beacon of hope for the entire city of Goerlitz,” says Rainer Mueller, chairman of an earlier citizens' initiative to attract a buyer for the site. “With the planned for October 2015 re-opening of the store, the dead heart of the city will begin to beat again.”

After escaping World War II unscathed, the Goerlitz department store had been closed for years when Anderson chose it for “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”


Even though Goerlitz had managed to attract a steady flow of film crews from Hollywood and Germany's Babelsberg over the years, featuring in “The Reader,” “The Book Thief,” and “Inglourious Basterds,” among other films, the town itself was slowly dying.

Like others in former East Germany, it lost many of its young people to the more vibrant West in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Although Siemens and the Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier still operate facilities here, unemployment ranges around 12 percent.

The elderly outnumber the young and the town ranks dead last among German cities in purchasing power, according to a recent study by Germany's Association for Consumer Research.

Many are optimistic the renovation will change that, says Corinna Schneider, the area manager for the German Parfumerie Thiemann, the last company to operate a boutique in the department store.

“Many people came to Goerlitz especially to see the Kaufhaus,” she said, seated at a nearby cafe. “They all said they'd be back when it opens.”

Still, it's hard to make the potential foot traffic numbers add up for retailers, even though locals like Mueller say the time of outward migration is over and tourism figures are up, thanks to the so-called Goerliwood phenomenon.

On a sunny summer day at least, tables are packed at the swish outdoor restaurants near the Hotel Boerse, where Anderson and actors Jude Law and Ralph Fiennes stayed during the filming of “Grand Budapest.”

“Everyone says this is a pensioners' town, but suddenly stores and kindergartens are opening, so something is definitely happening,” says Stefanie Eggers, spokeswoman for the renovation project who notes that 4,000 people turned up for the project's recent open house.

As Stoecker's team works to attract international brands and smaller boutiques to fill the store's 70,000-square-foot space, new trends emerging at the end of the European economic crisis present some advantages, says project manager Juergen Friedel.

Across the Neisse River from Poland, Goerlitz's local boutiques are already attracting Czech and Polish shoppers, whose purchasing power and thirst for Western products is growing faster than their hometowns can satisfy. Moreover, the picturesque town lies directly on the route from Poland to the larger city of Dresden, the current shopping Mecca for wealthy Poles.

“On the motorway, the first exit across the German border from Poland is Goerlitz,” Friedel says. “We'd like to make sure the Polish people take that exit and don't go to Dresden.”

The key to success, however, will be turning the Kaufhaus into a “destination store” that customers are willing to make the centerpiece of a day trip. In the US, that has mostly worked for megamalls or specialty stores such as Cabela's outfitters, which incorporates attractions like a simulated trout stream where anglers can test-drive fly rods.

More from GlobalPost: Here's the evidence (so far) that pro-Russian separatists shot down MH17

Friedel says Garhammer — a 65,000-square-foot, family-owned fashion boutique located 60 miles from Munich — proves that the right package of top products and personalized service can work in Germany, too.

Gourmet restaurants, espresso and Prosecco bars and other signature features are planned for every floor, and the team has sketched out ideas for festivals and events to recapture the sense of the department store as a center of sophistication and culture — as dramatized in the popular ITV series “Mr. Selfridge.”

Still, it’s a battle to get potential vendors to come look at the place, Friedel says. But if he can get them into town, he adds, most of them bite.

“Once they see the building and the town,” he says, “they can imagine how nice it will be.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140723/goerlitz-germany-grand-budapest-hotel-actually-department-store

Violence and anti-Semitism are shifting the Middle East debate in Europe

With more protests against Israel’s Gaza campaign expected on Friday, Palestinian supporters are worried their message is being drowned out.
By Jason Overdorf (GlobalPost, July 24, 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — Mention Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to the Arab customers and stylists at Salon Balbaak in the predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Neukoelln and the response is sighs of disgust.

“It's not just us Palestinians,” says Mustafa, a young man with wavy hair. “Every free-thinking person in Berlin is angry. You only have to see the children being killed.”

He may be exaggerating, but not by much.

Even as the United States continues its staunch support of Israeli policy, opposition to Israel’s actions is growingacross Europe as the death toll mounts in Gaza.

However, demonstrations against the military offensive have been marred by racist slogans and violence that is shifting the focus of the debate here from the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza toward the extent of anti-Semitism in Europe.

A court in France jailed three men on Thursday for rioting after a pro-Palestinian rally in a Paris suburb turned into anti-Semitic violence.

In several German cities, protestors have attacked pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators and chanted anti-Semitic slogans.

Mustafa, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, decries the damage such actions is inflicting on the protest effort.


“The protests have nothing to do with anti-Semitism,” he says. “We are not against the Jews. We are against the Israeli government.”

More than half of Germans believe Israel and Hamas bear equal responsibility for the fighting and 86 percent say Germany shouldn’t publicly support Israel, according to a recent survey.

However, Jewish groups argue that the racial slurs and anti-Semitic slogans suggest the protests are rooted in ethnic hatred rather than politics.

"We are experiencing an explosion of evil and violent hatred of Jews,” said Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in an official statement.

“All of us are shocked and dismayed that anti-Semitic slogans of the nastiest and most primitive type can be chanted openly on German streets.”

In Berlin last week, protesters chanted “Jew, Jew, cowardly bastard, come out and fight alone!” at a downtown rally against the military action in Gaza.

Earlier this month, police in the western German city of Essen arrested 14 people suspected of planning to attack an area synagogue.

Among other countries, protests have been particularly violent in France. In Paris, dozens looted shops and set a kosher grocery store on fire in a Jewish-dominated suburb over the weekend when a pro-Palestinian demonstration held in defiance of a French ban erupted into violence.

In Austria, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed onto the field at a soccer match, attacking players from Israel's Maccabi Haifa in town during a scrimmage against a French club.

In Berlin on Monday, 13 protesters were detained at a demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy for throwing stones at the police, who have prohibited specific slogans as a threat to public order after facing criticism for failing to silence earlier anti-Semitic chants.

“Especially in Germany, anti-Semitic protests have a very strong impact because of our history, and there always should be resistance to make clear that this is not what the public thinks,” Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich Redlich said.

“But for the police, we can only stop people from shouting slogans if the law says they are not allowed.”

However, the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups say they were disappointed by the initial police response. Diedre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee office in Berlin, said it's difficult to understand how officers at the scene could have doubted that what they were hearing was hate speech.

“Free speech has nothing to do with threatening people and creating an atmosphere of physical violence,” she said.

In a joint statement issued Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Italy vowed to fight anti-Semitism, giving the issue equal prominence to remarks from the UN high commissioner for human rights suggesting that Israel's actions in Gaza may be classified as war crimes.

More demonstrations are expected on Friday, a holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Opponents of the Israeli offensive worry that more violence will further mute their message.

“The protests are against the war, but of course there are some ignorant people who shout slogans against the Jews,” said Mohammed Barkat, editor of a magazine for Arabic speakers in Germany. “The problem is that the media in Europe is always on Israel's side — whether they're right or wrong.”

Online debates suggest some believe the shift is part of a deliberate Israeli public relations strategy.

Israel is “again hiding behind the anti-Semitism flag,” said a comment under an article in the Huffington Post.

“The greatest weapon of the Zionists is the term anti-Semitism,” added another.

More from GlobalPost: The Grand Budapest Hotel is actually a department store in Germany

That perception may have been boosted by some ill-considered remarks by Israel's ambassador to Germany, whom the Daily Mail quoted as saying, “They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin… as if we were in 1938.

However, the American Jewish Committee’s Berger says the focus on anti-Semitism by the press here is natural given Germany's history and the recent advances made by far-right parties across Europe.

“The notion that concerns about anti-Semitism are raised to squash criticism of Israel is a pretty shocking assertion,” she says. “It’s a good way to deflect attention from very serious incidents of anti-Semitism.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140724/germany-europe-israel-gaza-protests-anti-semitism

This German program offers some of the world's best paid job training. So why is it struggling to attract workers?

Despite its great success, the country’s apprenticeship system is battling to keep young people interested.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — When Hermann Oplanic failed to get into college three years ago, he was devastated.

Like a growing number of young people, the 25-year-old Berliner saw a university education as an essential pre-requisite for joining his country’s modern middle class.

But all was not lost. Thanks to an apprenticeship program that’s the envy of American manufacturers, he now believes circumstances forced him into making the right choice for his future.

“A friend of mine completed his studies first and then took an apprenticeship,” says Oplanic, a blond machinist dressed in blue overalls and a polo shirt who works for a company that produces gear-grinding equipment in the capital. “Now he thinks it would have been better to get some practical experience first.”

Run by companies mostly at their own expense, Germany's apprenticeship program is widely credited with producing the most highly skilled, hardest-working labor force in the world. But even as US President Barack Obama unveils a $100-million program aimed at emulating it, the German scheme is struggling to attract young people.

Officially integrated into the education system in 1969, Germany’s apprentice placements range from banking to butcher shops, administered by hundreds of chambers of commerce that set training standards and monitor how trainees are treated.

During apprenticeships that typically last three to three-and-a-half years, trainees spend four days a week working and one day at an academic “Berufschule,” or “career school,” earning salaries or hourly wages that match their level of experience.

For employers, the system provides a wellspring of employees trained to use the latest technologies, while state-run technical schools typically operate using factory and laboratory equipment as much as two decades out of date.


Being taught and evaluated by experienced workers who are possible future peers and colleagues helps instill a craftman's sense of pride that's harder to cultivate at community colleges and trade schools, say German executives like Martin Kapp, head of the German Machine Tool Builders' Assocation (VDW).

“Trained people will always find work in Germany,” says Kapp, who also owns the Kapp Group, which makes grinding machines and precision tools for the automobile, aerospace, and power generation industries. The company, where almost all top executives got their start as apprentices, employs around 50 apprentices at its headquarters in the central town of Coburg.

Although apprentice programs aren't unknown in the United States, they've traditionally remained the purview of the building trades and other union-dominated industries, and have mostly been eclipsed by community colleges and technical schools that students pay to attend. Only around 375,000 Americans were enrolled in apprenticeship programs at the beginning of this year, compared with 1.4 million in much smaller Germany.

But even as the Obama administration announces that its own drive to expand on-the-job training has resulted in the creation of 10,000 new apprenticeship programs in the US since January, trouble is brewing in the manufacturers' paradise.

A record low number of young Germans signed on as apprentices in 2013, due to demographic and social changes that mean ever fewer young people are joining the workforce as more are opting for university degrees, according to a new report from the Federal Statistics Office.

Even though Germany faces a looming shortage of skilled workers in key occupations, the government has until recently been trying to push more students into higher education, according to one of Germany's workers' guilds.

Oplanic, the machinist apprentice, says three quarters of his friends are studying at universities.

“The German system is very good,” he says. “But they want someone who can build a rocket for a job cleaning toilets.”

Where policymakers once promoted higher education in a bid to improve social mobility, the apprenticeship system is now credited with helping Germany achieve the EU's lowest rate of youth unemployment during the economic crisis, Kapp says.

“There was a time when everybody just looked at the statistics and saw that Germany had a lower number of people going to university,” he says.

That blinkered view ignored strengths of the German system that have been built up over decades and may prove more difficult than expected for the US to duplicate, Kapp says.

At his company's US manufacturing facility in Colorado, he tried again and again to set up an apprenticeship program based on the German model. But he found that American workers weren't willing to make long-term commitments to training programs — at least with machinists in hot demand. Moreover, American engineering graduates had no interest in getting their hands dirty on the shop floor — an essential component of Germany's reputation for excellence.

More from GlobalPost: Europe is struggling to find its soul

A similar effort to build an apprenticeship system in the UK has run into trouble because Britain lacks the management infrastructure of powerful trade bodies that control standards in Germany. Many of the new programs are too short to be much use and the range of programs is too diverse for the qualifications to have value, the Economist recentlycomplained.

Whatever the benefits for society at large, the German model means that companies, not the government or the students themselves, absorb most of the cost of job training.

Kapp says his total investment easily adds up to more than $1 million over five years. That’s something businesses in other countries may not be willing to sacrifice.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140716/germany-manufacturing-apprentice-system

How Germany’s World Cup victory symbolizes its leading role in Europe

As Germans fight off hangovers after a night of extravagant partying, their team’s history-making win represents a decade of reforms in economics as well as soccer.
By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — When the scoreless World Cup soccer final went into extra time late Sunday night, Berlin’s streets and subways were deserted.

With the match commentary blaring from open windows and doors, however, you could walk from the neighborhoods of central Mitte to nearby Kreuzberg without losing track of the game. On every corner, fans spilled out of bars, cafes and restaurants, jostling for a glimpse of the action on television screens.

When substitute Mario Goetze chested a clean pass onto his left foot and volleyed the ball past Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Romero to finally give Germany the lead with 113 minutes gone, a roar of exhilaration erupted across the city.

Crowds outside the Turkish cafes of the immigrant-dominated neighborhoods Kreuzberg and Neukoelln burst firecrackers and beat drums.

When the final whistle blew minutes later, the denizens of the hard-core German dives known as “local smokers” broke out into choruses of “Olé, olé, olé, all Germans, sing Olé!” — an announcement that the all-night party had begun.

“We're the World Champions!” shouted a group of men draped in German flags as the celebration moved to the street.

Unlike in Argentina, where at least 70 people were injured as disappointed fans smashed shop windows and vandalized cars, across Germany, virtually the only casualties were brain cells as the drinking continued into the early morning.

Nearly a quarter million people watched the match on the so-called “fan mile” created around Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate, which police had to close off before the game started to prevent overcrowding.


Police estimated that another 15,000 took to the famous Kurfuerstendamm shopping avenue in former West Berlin after the final whistle.

As the sun rose this morning, thousands were still at it, judging from the occasional blare of car horns and the sound of drunken singing.

German astronaut Alexander Gerst congratulated the team from space.

Chancellor Angela Merkel posed for a selfie with striker Lukas Podolski.

US coach Juergen Klinsmann — who helped Germany win the cup as a player in 1990 but failed as coach for the national side in 2006 — echoed widespread opinion, saying, “The best team won the 2014 World Cup.”

For coach Joachim Loew and the German players — a dream team of veterans who had largely stayed together since winning the Under-21 UEFA championships in 2009 — the victory was a major vindication. Perennial bridesmaids, “Der Mannschaft” had been to the semifinals or finals in every World Cup since 2002 without bringing home the hardware.

After a dismal performance in the 2004 European Championships, the team launched a decade of reform under then-coach Klinsmann. For Low, who continued the regime after he took over two years later, another loss may have meant losing his last World Cup chance.

For the country at large, the win also represents a historic and symbolic victory — and the peaceful jubilation made for a fitting end to a dream performance.

Although the former West Germany won the World Cup three times, most recently in 1990, Sunday's match marked the first victory for the unified country.

Germany’s World Cup victories have also represented the country’s economic fortunes. Stunning the world in 1954, the first win symbolized Germans’ emergence from devastation in World War II.

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Sunday’s win now marks Germany’s position as Europe’s economic and political powerhouse, after a decade of reforms enabled it to drop its image as the sick man of Europe.

With five prominent players who were born abroad or eligible to play for other countries, the team also represents a new, increasingly immigrant-friendly country confident in its role in the world.

Goetze, the player who pounded in the winning goal, hadn’t even been born when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 — perhaps the last time this city saw a party of this magnitude.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140714/berlin-germany-world-cup-2014-victory

Germany goes for World Cup history. No pressure.

Second-best just won't cut it for Germany anymore.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — Across Berlin this week, German flags droop from apartment balconies, flutter from the windows of passing cars and festoon the fronts of driving schools, kebab shops, party stores and bars.

It's a rare release for Germany's pent-up patriotism following their 7-1 drubbing ofBrazil and going into Sunday's World Cup final against Argentina.

But the uncharacteristic expressions of national pride have put even more pressure on the German side to make history.

In every World Cup since 2002, Germany has at least made it to the semifinals, but has yet to bring home the trophy.

“When a team comes so close to the title so many times, the desire for a victory gets stronger and stronger,” said Rafael Wieczorek, director of Coerver Coaching in Germany and Austria.

“At the same time, this team is considered by fans and experts to be the best German team since 1990, perhaps since 1972. So the expectations are very high.”

A favorite to win the tournament from the beginning, by trouncing Brazil, Germany convinced virtually everyone that the final is in the bag.

Yet as press reports this week revealed that the German team had made a halftime pact not to embarrass Brazil too badly after going up 5-0, German coach Joachim Löw and company have strived to emphasize “focus” and “concentration” — perhaps fearing that the blowout may already have turned high expectations into hubris.


Symbolism only heightens those expectations further. Though the former West Germany has won the tournament three times, most recently in 1990, a win by Löw's side would mark the first victory for unified Germany in history.

With immigrant stars like Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira, among others, the team represents an unified, multicultural Germany where the foreign-born are no longer considered outsiders. Five prominent players on the national squad were either born abroad or would be eligible to play for another nation — mirroring Germany's broader effort to attract, rather than exclude, immigrants with measures like a liberal dual citizenship policy.

Moreover, in a country where hanging the flag would normally get you labeled a “right winger,” if not worse, the match comes as the nation finally seems ready to slough off the memory of World War II and demand to be treated as a “normal country” — with political might and military responsibilities to match its economic importance.

In recent months, Germany's president and defense minister have each pushed for a greater German military role in foreign conflicts, even as Germany's role in the Ukraine crisis cements Chancellor Angela Merkel's position as the de facto leader of Europe.

At “Zur Traube,” a neighborhood bar in the heart of Berlin, confidence is running particularly high. Ordinarily, the joint supports one of the Bundesliga teams, with free shots of liquor for every goal. But like every other bar in the city, this week it is draped with the black, red and yellow of the national flag.

“If Germany wins, this place will explode with joy,” says bartender Gerd Hettenhausen. “Everybody drinks more when Germany wins.”

In that case, there will be a victory parade in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, where the so-called “Fan Mile” is already draped with symbols of national pride.

But if the team loses — making it five losses out of eight trips to the finals — there won't be a reception at all, according to off-field manager Oliver Bierhoff.

In other words, second-best won't cut it for Germany anymore — and that pressure could make winning just a wee bit harder.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140712/germany-world-cup-history-argentina

Germany is angry with the US but can’t do much about it — for now at least

However, the latest spy scandal rocking relations between the two countries may affect longer-term attitudes toward Washington.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — Although allegations that the CIA actively worked to recruit a double agent in Germany's top spy agency is prompting renewed outrage from German officials on Tuesday, experts say the government has little scope for much more than issuing strong words.

“There will be a lot of castigation but the two governments will continue to cooperate on the wide range of issues where their interests overlap,” says James Davis of the University of St. Gallen.

Still, the latest espionage scandal to hit relations between the two countries is strengthening calls for Germany to offer support, possibly even asylum, to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and prompting new demands for the government to launch its own espionage program directed against the US.

However, the largest casualty may be a major EU-US free trade agreement that’s enjoyed the support of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“That the Chancellor will have to be seen as representing the interests of a sovereign country seems clear, both from a foreign policy and domestic politics perspective,” Davis says of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

“[Therefore] the episode will strengthen the hand of those who are against TTIP.”

When not stoking new anger against the US, the case has fascinated German observers because of the curious way it’s unfolded.

Unnamed US officials confirmed Monday that the CIA had indeed recruited an agent of Germany's foreign intelligence service, who was arrested by the German authorities last week on suspicion of being a double agent.


However, the authorities initially said they had detained the man in connection with an alleged offer to sell information to Russia. While in custody, he purportedly confessed to working with US agents as well, selling as many as 218 classified documents over a two-year period for a total of around $35,000, reports said.

His lawyer stopped short of confirming those details on Monday, but he told German television that “there are things in the media which are true.” Earlier reports by Der Spiegel and the Suddeutschezeitung suggested that the double agent had been tasked with gathering inside information about a German parliamentary committee's inquiry into the NSA's activities in Germany — including the tapping of the chancellor's mobile phone.

Alghough Merkel’s cellphone may have made the biggest headlines, ordinary Germans have been mainly concerned about Snowden's revelations about the NSA's massive data collection program. The latest revelations about US agents allegedly working to subvert the inquiry into that case adds a new layer of betrayal, says Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe.

“The goal was to spy on this [parliamentary investigative] committee and get secret documents on this committee's work,” he says. “This is what people have taken really hard.”

The public outrage has forced politicians to take stronger stances against the US, Techau adds. And while the new revelations may not result in any immediate consequences for US-German relations, he adds, growing popular disgust with Washington may have long-term implications.

Already, nearly two-thirds of Germans think their officials should act more independently from the US, according to a poll conducted by TNS Research for Der Spiegel. Some 69 percent said their confidence in America had fallen recently.

Visiting China with a trade delegation when the story broke, Merkel issued what some view as her strongest statement yet on the allegations of US spying, saying the case represents a “clear contradiction as to what I consider to be trusting cooperation between agencies and partners.”

President Joachim Gauck exploded on German TV, saying “enough is enough,” and Bild newspaper reported that Home Minister Thomas de Maiziere is pushing to step up spying on the US.

Although that actually taking place is unlikely, those comments and others like them reflect the growing pressure on policymakers from media and public opinion to take some kind of action, says Volker Perthes, director of the Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

“Germany should and will probably improve its counter-intelligence activities, also with an eye on what our American allies are doing,” he says.

Intelligence cooperation between German intelligence agencies and their US counterparts could also be reduced, he adds. And German policymakers could add their voices to those in the European parliament calling for canceling the SWIFT agreement on exchanging banking data.

The growing public disenchantment with the US could have farther-reaching implications over the upcoming months and years.

Germany's orientation has increasingly tilted toward US foreign policy goals and economic ideals in recent years, illustrated by Merkel's toughening stance toward Russia. But growing skepticism about US intentions could slow or skew that tilt, especially if it begins to influence voters' attitudes toward American values.

Davis says the spying scandals are especially affecting the attitudes of younger Germans under 25.

“These revelations continue a long series of similar episodes that together leave the impression for many in Germany that the USA has lost its anchor.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140708/germany-us-espionage-scandal-nsa-snowden

Russia's pipeline politics are dividing the EU

The Kremlin is seeking to isolate Ukraine by strengthen Europe's dependence on Russian gas.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, July 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — As the authorities in Ukraine step up assaults against separatists in the east of the country following the end of a tenuous ceasefire there, Russia is working hard behind the scenes elsewhere to dash their hopes of restoring some measure of stability.

Moscow is waging a propaganda campaign against the government in Kyiv in addition to apparently giving support to the pro-Russia rebels. But the Kremlin is showing its greatest depth in its moves to undermine unity among Ukraine’s Western supporters over sanctions and other measures that would punish Russia for meddling in the affairs of its southern neighbor.

For that, it’s relying on its most powerful trump card, a foreign policy tool it’s brandished for the last decade to stunning effect: energy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Moscow ahead of talks on Ukraine on Wednesday that economic sanctions remain an option if the Kremlin doesn't back peace efforts.

But a plan to build a major new pipeline that would pump Russian natural gas to Europe is helping drive a wedge between European countries that have so far united at least rhetorically against Russia's adventurism in Ukraine.

Moscow is hoping Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and even Italy and France may soften their stances over Ukraine thanks to pressure from their own large energy conglomerates, which have signed very lucrative deals with Russia’s Gazprom natural gas monopoly.

That’s because any plans to reduce dependence on Russian supplies would hit so-called legacy European energy companies, such as Austria's OMV, Germany's RWE and Italy's Eni, as hard as Gazprom, says Andrew McKillop, former policy analyst at the European Commission's energy directorate.

“There's a legacy infrastructure problem for the European common energy market that is very difficult to reconcile,” he says.


Russia’s planned South Stream pipeline would have the capacity to pump 63 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year directly into Southern Europe by way of the Black Sea. The route would enable the company to bypass Ukraine, where price disputes and unmonitored siphoning of gas has prompted two shutoffs that have affected supplies to Europe.

The North Stream pipeline, a similar 55-billion cubic meter conduit across the Baltic Sea that opened in 2012, has already cut the volume of gas that Russia sends through Ukraine by a quarter.

Ukraine has been able to use its role as a transit route for Europe-bound Russian gas to pressure European countries as well as the Kremlin.

But the addition of the South Stream would enable Russia to cut off supplies to Ukraine without hurting its own access to crucial European markets.

That would mean what happens in Kyiv or Crimea may no longer be of vital importance to countries like Germany that currently rely on Russian supplies for some 40 percent of their gas.

Russia’s success would probably embolden Moscow to continue using energy politics to influence events in other former Soviet republics such as Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, which are also seeking closer ties with Europe, says Carnegie Europe's Judy Dempsey.

“South Stream and North Stream actually consolidate Europe's dependence on Russian gas,” she says. “If South Stream goes ahead, that dependence will be set in a pipeline under the Black Sea, so to speak.”

The pipeline could prove even more important for Kremlin-controlled Gazprom as it races to beat a growing list of of liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers and other competitors to a quickly changing energy market.

Mushrooming LNG terminals will soon be able to supply the entire gas demand of countries like France — which also receives piped gas from Norway and Algeria. Meanwhile, gas consumption is falling across Europe, making a drop in gas prices virtually inevitable.

At the same time, plans for a common European energy market that the EU hopes will help make diversifying energy sources easier would force Gazprom and other energy conglomerates to allow new competitors to use pipelines and electricity distribution infrastructure they built — giving the new arrivals an inherent cost advantage.

“[Gazprom] has to finance its competitors and it's selling less gas. And the unit price of gas is falling,” McKillop says. “Can you imagine a worse situation than that?”

So far, the EU has attempted to use antitrust laws that prevent gas suppliers from owning distribution infrastructure to weaken Gazprom’s control over European energy supplies.

But South Stream represents the company's bid to show Europe there's no compelling reason to diversify its sources after all.

With Austria's OMV, Italy's Eni, France's EDF and Germany's BASF all involved in the project, there’s already evidence they’re forcing cracks in the European alliance, Dempsey says.

Already, Austria, Bulgaria and other countries are demanding exemptions from the antitrust rules, and more trouble looks to be brewing.

On Tuesday, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban confirmed that Hungary will go aheadwith building the section of South Stream that lies within its borders despite US and European objections.

The same day, Italy's state secretary for European affairs told Russia's state-owned news agency that his country, too, has “a strong interest in implementing it.”

More from GlobalPost: This Russian dashcam video of a biker gang attacking a motorist is insane, but not for the usual reasons

Earlier this week, energy experts speculated that rumors prompting a run on Bulgaria's largest banks and an EU move to shore up those institutions may have been salvos in a tussle over Bulgaria's section of the pipeline, which European officials ordered put on hold in early June.

Meanwhile, Austrian President Heinz Fischer invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Vienna last week to put an official stamp on a deal to land the South Stream pipe at OMV's Baumgarten gas terminal — undermining EU warnings about the possibility of escalating sanctions against Russia.

“There is a basic economic role for Austria, an advantage for Austria, in supporting this project, so the political factors were sidelined,” McKillop says.

Moscow is surely hoping that logic will prevail in other European countries as the battle over Ukraine plays out in the months and years ahead.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/energy/140702/russia-south-stream-pipeline-ukraine-european-union

This is what free speech looks like to Google

Germans start challenging the internet search giant after a landmark EU ruling on internet privacy.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost, June 2014)

BERLIN, Germany — You may think anyone whose own company's search engine autocompletes his name with the phrases “is evil,” “is a douche” and “is creepy” would have some sympathy for lesser mortals who have somehow been damned to internet hell.

But in the case of Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, you'd be wrong.

Last month, the European Union issued a landmark ruling that redefined internet privacy by establishing a “right to be forgotten” enabling European citizens to demand Google and other search engines remove sensitive personal information from the results of searches for their names.

Now a looming battle is shaping up over which requests will be honored, and Schmidt’s company is sticking to its guns in a series of precedent-testing cases in Germany that are highlighting how radically the web is redefining the borders between privacy and freedom of speech.

Cologne-based lawyer Christian Solmecke's telephone has been ringing off the hook since the EU ruling.

“So far, about 100 people have contacted me so that we can help them to delete links to information about themselves,” he says.

Google has been even busier. Within a week of the ruling, it received some 41,000 requests for links to be severed, the company says. Nearly a third were related to frauds or scams, a fifth concerned serious crimes, and 12 percent were connected to child pornography arrests.

Google has always maintained that its search results are essentially the same as newspaper reports, meaning the words generated by its algorithms constitute protected speech.


However, the issue isn't as simple as its statistics suggest, Solmecke says. The EU ruling defines Google not as a printing press but a “profile building machine,” the lawyer explains.

That means the search engine's tabulation of information available on the web doesn’t necessarily enjoy the same legal protections as the information itself. Even if a newspaper article that mentions your name can’t be removed from the internet, you may be able to prevent Google from directing web users there when they type in your name.

The judgment also shifts the burden of proof.

Previously, individuals had to show information to be false or slanderous in order to force Google to remove it. Now Google must effectively prove not only that the information is true but also that it's important to the public interest.

That may make the defense of free speech an even stickier problem.

While individuals seeking to remove information will probably have strong personal motives to edit their pasts, Google's reasons for defending the public's right to know are more abstract. That may create an imbalance: The company’s motives for defending free speech are mainly financial, and it will cost the company money and effort to defend itself against each individual case, making that less likely.

That raises interesting debates in an age when Facebook posts can acquire lives of their own even after their authors delete them.

One of Solmecke's clients is a 23-year-old man currently applying for jobs. When a prospective employer Googles his name, virtually the first result that pops up is a 10-year-old newspaper article about a reading competition that he won — as part of a special-education program he doesn’t want mentioned.

In another case, a leading business executive who was convicted of data theft two decades ago argues that the information, although accurate, should no longer define him to colleagues, employers and casual acquaintances when they search his name.

Bettina Wulff, the wife of former German President Christian Wulff, has already won a cease and desist order against Google over its autocomplete function, which suggested terms such as “red light district” and “escort” when users typed in her name because of an unsubstantiated rumor about her past.

Her success shows it was possible to stop Google and other websites from printing false or slanderous information even before the recent EU ruling. But the hurdles were practically insurmountable.

Google required a court judgment from the countries where the source information was hosted, which could mean legal battles in Belize or the Cayman Islands.

Challenges could also be counterproductive. More than 80 percent of Germans learned the prostitution rumors about Wulff from her campaign to squash them, a recent poll found.

The newspaper report about the special education prize presents trickier problems.

It's not slanderous. It's not even incorrect. Prior to the EU’s ruling, there would have been no grounds for blocking it.

But the challenger believes it's discouraging prospective employers — and that it's difficult to make the case that keeping the article associated with his name is somehow in the public interest.

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“Everyone who Googles me thinks I'm a disabled person and that's not true,” his lawyer quoted him as saying.

The newspaper reports about the businessman convicted of data theft are also not slanderous. But it's more difficult to ascertain whether it's in the public interest for his conviction to remain associated with his name.

“There's always a stigma that I've done something wrong 20 years ago,” Solmecke quoted him as saying.

Now that he may be empowered to edit out that mistake, more legal problems may arise in the future: no one, including Google, currently has as strong a motive to fight for the public's right to know about it.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140624/germany-google-free-speech-privacy-eu

Germany's renewables paradox a warning sign for China

As green energy in Germany grows, carbon emissions are increasing rather than decreasing

By Jason Overdorf

China Dialogue (June 2014)

From the hay field behind his house, Gunter Jurischka points out the solar panels glittering from the town's rooftops and the towering wind turbines spinning lazily on the horizon.

Thanks to Germany's now famous Energiewende (or “energy transition”) programme, this tiny village of 800 souls produces enough electricity to supply 15,000 households from wind, solar and biogas.

But in what should come as a warning signal to countries like China that are rapidly rolling out renewable energy projects, a ruling by the state government earlier this June promises to uproot these villagers. Proschim's green dream will be bulldozed to make way for a 2,000-hectare, open-cast coal mine.

“We don't have time for energy from the Middle Ages anymore,” said Jurischka, a weather-beaten former agronomist with piercing eyes and longish salt-and-pepper hair.

It's beginning to look like he might be right.

Hailed by environmentalists as a model for how the world's nations can stop global warming, Germany's Energiewende is designed to virtually eliminate emissions and convert 60% of the country's energy production to renewables by 2050. But as the concept catches on in nations like China – which now leads the world in green power capacity and investment in renewables – cracks are emerging in the foundations, suggesting focusing on renewables will not be enough.

“Going down the renewables route is good, but not enough to save the climate,” said Patrick Graichen, director of Agora Energiewende, an independent think-tank based in Berlin.

“The popular perception is [that] we're doing the renewables and that's what needs to be done.... [But] renewables are only half of the story. The other half is keeping coal beneath the ground.”

Germany has already succeeded in boosting the share of renewables to 25% of its total power production, compared with around 13% in the US and around 20% in China, according to the latest report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). But in what Germans are calling the “Energiewende paradox”, the country's overall carbon-dioxide emissions rose by 1.2% last year. Meanwhile, instead of a phase-out of conventional power, Germany is expected to add more coal-fired generation capacity this year than it has in over a decade.

“It's a big step back,” said Anike Peters, a campaigner at Greenpeace Germany. “If the politicians want a real Energiewende, they should shift away from coal.”

The coming coal boom

The recent German increase in hard, or black, coal is a one-off, driven by low carbon prices in Europe prior to the economic crisis and a race to get projects approved before higher emissions set in, according to longtime Energiewende watchers Arne Jungjohann and Craig Morris. But without policy changes, the brown coal of Proschim – called lignite by the energy sector – could see a decade-long boom.

“Germany lacks specific policies to reduce lignite and increase natural gas use,” Jungjohann and Morris conclude in a recent article for the Heinrich Böll Foundation. “Unless that changes, the market is unlikely to bring about a reduction in power production from lignite until the mid-2020s.”

For China, which now burns nearly as much black coal as the rest of world combined according to a Bloomberg energy study, Germany's problems will come as grim news. China invested more money in renewables than all of Europe in 2013, and for the first time its investments in green energy surpassed its investments in conventional power. But due to rapid economic growth, the world's factory will more than double its overall power generation by 2030, adding the equivalent of the entire UK power grid every year, according to Bloomberg. Coal will fuel 58% of its production.

Germany's Energiewende helps to explain why.

The problem Germany faces is that the supply from renewable sources like the sun and wind comes in peaks and valleys, and subsidies for storage technologies have not kept up with those designed to drive green-energy production.

On cloudy, windless days, the country needs the steady electricity supply from coal- or gas-fired generators to keep the lights on and the factories running. Yet when there is an excess, the country can't use enough of the supply to pump water uphill for later use by hydroelectric plants or to convert water into hydrogen. So on sunny, windy days, windmills and coal-powered turbines alike must be disconnected to prevent the surge blowing fuses across the grid.

At the same time, while German consumers complain about high prices due to the green energy subsidy they see on their monthly electricity bills, the dramatic expansion of capacity has caused wholesale energy prices to plunge.

The combined result is that Germany's three main conventional power producers – Eon, RWE and Vattenfall – are often selling electricity for less than the amount it costs them to produce it. And paradoxically, as the US shale gas boom drives down coal prices without affecting gas prices in Europe and Asia, they are encouraged to turn to the conventional fuel least suited to supporting the drive toward renewables: lignite, or “brown coal”.

Abundant in Lusatia and the Rhineland, brown coal supplies around 15% of Germany's energy. Because it's close enough to the ground to be scraped off the top, rather than dug out in deep mines, it's the cheapest fuel available, located right next to the power plants that burn it. Moreover, Germany's grid operates by a so-called “merit order” that takes energy produced by the cheapest fuel first, using power from renewables first, then nuclear, then lignite, then hard coal and only then natural gas. So lignite plants are the last to be taken offline when the supply spikes.

Even then, while natural gas-fired power plants can be stopped and started without much lag time when the wind and solar supply peaks, the most modern coal-fired plants presently in use in Germany must burn at 35% of maximum capacity even when they are officially offline. Worse still, soft brown coal produces 50% more carbon dioxide per kilowatt than black coal and twice as much as natural gas.

“Lignite is the dirtiest fossil fuel, but it has many other disadvantages, because it's not a good partner for renewable energies,” said Greenpeace's Peters.

New policies needed

Clearly, both Germany and China need more than yesterday's feed-in-tariffs and ever higher green-energy production to fight global warming.

In the short term that means grid-preference for flexible but reliable natural gas-power plants instead of cheaper lignite, as well as subsidies for electricity stored in batteries or converted to hydropower or hydrogen – presaging a longer window for the add-ons to their bills that have turned many Germans sour on the Energiewende. German policymakers should also consider taxing carbon or banning new lignite mines, which would allow the producers to keep using the fuel for a decade or more, say experts like Graichen, Jungjohann and Morris.

But in the long term it could mean subsidies for the big conventional power companies today viewed as the enemy – effectively paying them to keep operating plants that will never make a profit because they only exist for the days that the wind doesn't blow.