Pluto in Cap, the USA, the future of the world

[Rad]

Dutch company hopes to change the world with first commercial ‘flying car’

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, April 2, 2012 12:43 EDT


A Dutch company said this weekend that it had conducted its first successful test of their “flying car” prototype that they hope to make available for consumers by sometime in 2014.

The Personal Air and Land Vehicle — PAL-V, for short — is not a new concept: its European creators have been working on the vehicle for years now, and even suffered a thumping by reporters in 2009 when they showed off a mini-copter design that looked nothing like the device featured in their artists’ renditions.

That early demonstration, however, appears to have been merely a proof-of-technology display to showcase their helicopter’s new gyro-sensing capabilities. Finally demonstrated again last weekend, it now seems that PAL-V Europe‘s design and engineering concepts have come together nicely, with the near end result looking remarkably like their initial drawings and flying like a champ.

With its rotors deployed, the PAL-V looks more like a helicopter than a car, but the blades can retract and fold up when the vehicle switches to driving mode, much like a convertible can fold and stow its top. Seating two, the company says it can cover up to 750 miles on a full tank of gas, clocking in at about 28 miles per gallon. It gets a bit less while flying, though: PAL-V Europe adds that a full tank should provide enough lift to travel 220-315 miles.

The PAL-V, however, is not made to fly terribly high, which the company argues is actually a selling point. They boast that because of its altitude range, the PAL-V is the first device of its kind which may be legally driven and piloted in the U.S. or Europe, where commercial aircraft are banned from lower airspace.

Even though the PAL-V demonstration video was posted on April 1, incredible as it sound and looks, the PAL-V does not appear to be another hoax like the “bird man” video that went viral earlier this year.

Pal-V Europe hopes to deliver their forthcoming vehicle sometime in 2014.

click to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SgHSaNtAMjs

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/02/2012 03:59 PM

A World without Oil: Companies Prepare for a Fossil-Free Future

Drivers may hate rising gas prices, but some companies are delighted as they watch the oil price soar. Firms like BMW and Airbus which are leaders in fuel efficiency actually benefit from expensive oil. They are just two of a growing number of companies that are already developing technologies for a post-fossil-fuel world. By SPIEGEL Staff

A few cents more and a liter of super unleaded gasoline will cost German drivers €1.80 (around $9 a gallon). That means that someone driving a BMW 3 Series will have to pay over €110 ($150) to fill up the tank, with its 63 liter (17 gallon) capacity.

But Norbert Reithofer, the CEO of BMW, seems surprisingly relaxed for an executive whose company's products depend on gasoline and diesel. "One could see this as a threat," Reithofer says. But the auto executive actually views the rising price of fuel as "an opportunity." He is convinced that his company will in fact "derive a benefit from this."

The Munich-based automaker has invested billions of euros in fuel-saving technologies, such as efficient engines, brake energy recovery and ultra-lightweight carbon fiber car bodies. BMW is now considered a leader in the field, and the company's record sales in 2011 suggest that this is something its customers are willing to pay for. And that, Reithofer believes, is why the company will ultimately benefit from high prices at the pump.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders uses a similar argument. He ought to be upset about high kerosene prices. They have sharply affected his customers, the airlines, whose profits are shrinking and who are investing less money in buying new planes as a result. Nevertheless, Airbus has never had as many orders on its books as it does today.

Last year, Airbus received well over 1,000 orders for its A320 neo model, with scheduled delivery starting in 2015. Thanks to new engines and special wings, the plane uses about 15 percent less fuel, making it significantly more fuel-efficient than competitor Boeing's comparable models. This is a critical selling argument in times of high kerosene prices, says Enders. "To a certain extent, we do benefit from the high price of oil," he adds.

Addicted to Oil

This is certainly one way of looking at things. Drivers are upset about the record high prices at the pump. But on the positive side, they also force companies to change the way they are using the increasingly precious commodity, so that they consume it more consciously and not as wastefully. And that change is necessary.

The world is addicted to a material that is being used up from day to day and from hour to hour, a material that is also much too valuable to be burned. The prosperity of the human race is based on limited resources. Most people know this, and yet they refuse to accept the necessary consequence: reducing their use of fossil fuels.

The record high prices for gasoline are probably the most effective incentive for us to finally kick the oil habit and search for alternatives. And they are fueling the modernization of the economy in the process.

The withdrawal will undoubtedly be tough. The economy will be affected when it is deprived of its lubricant. But consumers and business owners have no choice, and the longer they delay, the more painful the transition will be.

No Plan B

When gas prices go down, people drive more and buy more powerful cars, which in turn leads to higher fuel consumption. But when that happens, the world heads toward the inevitable end of the oil era even more quickly than it already is. At some point, it will consume the last drop of oil and end up without a plan B.

But if gasoline becomes noticeably more expensive, phasing out fossil fuels could be relatively pain-free, as paradoxical as it sounds, because it will prolong the transition into the post-oil era. The world would be buying time for an energy revolution, gaining a reprieve in which scientists could develop more efficient batteries for electric vehicles, for example, or grow energy plants to produce biofuel in a way that takes up as little agricultural land as possible. Higher fuel prices would enable the world to stave off the fossil-fuel finale.

If the United States, France, Great Britain and Japan do in fact release their oil reserves, the stockpiles of fuel that are built up to deal with crises like disruptions in supply, wars or natural disasters -- as some politicians have been calling for -- it will probably bring down prices at first, but it will also send precisely the wrong message.

By now, it isn't just environmentalists, but also liberal economists who advocate a strategy of increasing fuel prices. Oil is apparently still far too cheap, or else consumers wouldn't be as wasteful with it, says Thomas Straubhaar, president of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics. "The whip of scarcity is the most effective tool for driving innovation."

This brutal mechanism could be seen for the first time after the 1973/74 oil crisis. At the time, the oil producing industry searched for new sources to reduce dependency on oil from the Middle East. This led to discoveries of deposits under the ocean floor in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Approaching the Limits

But now the Earth's supply of oil is approaching its limits. The development of new fields is becoming more and more complicated, costly and dangerous, as the accident at the Elgin natural gas platform in the North Sea demonstrated last week. Even more important is the fact that not even all of the oil in the Arctic and the deep sea will be enough to quench the immense thirst for energy developing in East Asia.

China already consumes 9 million barrels of oil a day, or almost twice as much as it did 10 years ago. It is estimated that by 2020 the number of new cars sold in China will be 70 percent higher than today, and all those additional cars will lead to more traffic congestion. A huge new generation of energy users is emerging in the People's Republic and in India, and they are emulating the Western model of consumption, complete with air-conditioned homes and a car in the garage. The two countries, both with populations of more than a billion people, have a lot of catching up to do.

If every person on Earth used as much energy as the average person in the United States, today's known oil reserves would be exhausted within nine years.

Worldwide energy use will almost double by 2050, predicts the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The most problematic aspect of this is that, according to scientists, the share of energy consumption attributable to oil, gas and coal will not decrease. Today, four-fifths of the energy we use comes from fossil sources. "The erosion of our natural environmental capital will increase the risk of irreversible changes that could jeopardize two centuries of rising living standards," warns the OECD in its report.

The message behind this warning is that commodity prices must send a clear signal, namely that society can no longer afford a prosperity that is based on the squandering of natural resources. But what are the consequences for consumers? How much more expensive do fuels have to get so that people change their behavior?

Turning Adversity into a Virtue
For Nils Zimmermann, the pain threshold has already been exceeded. Zimmermann owns a parquet floor installation business in the Hamburg district of Bramfeld. He has 11 employees, and with the exception of the secretary, they are almost constantly on the road. He explains that his total gasoline costs came to about €30,000 last year, compared to costs that were about a third lower five years ago. "We had to think of something new," Zimmermann says.

At the beginning of the year, Zimmermann added an electric car to his company's fleet of vehicles: a refitted Fiat 500. The electric car costs him €4.50 per 100 kilometers, says Zimmermann, adding that his SUV is five times as expensive to operate. He plans to gradually phase out his other vehicles and replace with more fuel-efficient alternatives. "That's the future," says Zimmermann.

In many other industries, the transition isn't going quite as smoothly. High oil prices are a serious blow to airlines, for example. Lufthansa has already imposed a strict conservation program. The German airline's kerosene expenditures increased by €1.3 billion to €6.3 billion last year, and this year it expects fuel costs to go up by another €1.2 billion.

Indeed, skyrocketing energy costs are causing problems for the entire transportation sector, forcing freight forwarders, shipping companies and package-delivery businesses to recalculate their costs. For a company like the German postal service, Deutsche Post, with its 50,000 vehicles, each additional cent it pays at the gas station affects the bottom line by millions. Deutsche Bahn, the German national railroad, is another case in point. It spends more on energy -- €2.5 billion last year alone -- than any other German company.

Sticker Shock

The sticker shock is striking at the nerve center of the entire economy. Germany, with its broad industrial base and its flagship industries of car manufacturing, machine-building and chemical production, is more dependent on energy than any other country in the European Union. Germany's spending on oil has increased dramatically, growing by more than €23 billion within two years -- an increase equivalent to almost 1 percent of the country's gross domestic product. This translates into lower profits and less investment.

In addition, Germany, as the world's top exporting economy for many years, suffers more than most countries when shipping expenses become a significant cost factor again. The screws, sheet metal and other primary products that German companies buy on the world market are usually shipped by sea or air, and the finished products are then sold around the world. In times of three-digit oil prices, shipping goods halfway around the globe becomes prohibitively expensive, says Canadian economist Jeff Rubin. A former investment banker, Rubin expects to see a growing trend back to regional and location production. He predicts that our world "is about to get a whole lot smaller."

A world that is smaller in this sense doesn't have to be worse off. But there should be no room in it for those excesses of the international division of labor that are only possible because of a low oil price. An example is the shipping of crabs from the North Sea coast to Morocco, where they are shelled, and then transported back to Germany on trucks.

Cheap oil helped fuel globalization. More expensive oil would hardly stop it, but it might slow it down -- at least until the day alternative fuels replace fossil fuels. "Economic history teaches us that hardship sparks invention," says economist Rubin.

This is the alternative that would lead the consuming countries out of the fossil-fuel trap. The oil-producing countries, for their part, appear to be the winners at the moment. This spring, they were paid more for their mineral resources than ever before.

But easily earned petro-dollars have made countries like Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria corrupt and lethargic. The oil billions have not stimulated economic development. In fact, they have tended to achieve the opposite effect, because it didn't seem necessary to develop other industries.

Planning for the Long Term

So far, only a few oil and gas-producing countries are beginning to realize that they have to develop a broader base for their economies. The search is on for sources of affluence beyond oil -- even in countries like the United Arab Emirates, where reserves are still plentiful and could feed at least another generation. But what would happen after that?

Perhaps it has something to do with the country's Bedouin traditions that the Nahyan ruling family has even asked itself such a question. Those who have learned to survive in the desert have also learned to stock up and plan for the future.

About two-thirds of oil revenues in the UAE are saved, primarily through Abu Dhabi's ADIA sovereign wealth fund. With worldwide assets of $627 billion, the ADIA represents the largest financial cushion of any country, and is larger than similar sovereign wealth funds operated by China, Norway and Saudi Arabia. Where the other third of oil revenues goes, becomes apparent on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

The main building of the new Zayed University, with its curved, futuristic-looking roof, stands on the outskirts of the city. Abu Dhabi's leaders built the university as a place where a young generation of Arabs could study at a top international institution. Across the street is the lens-shaped headquarters building of the Aldar investment company, which operates the future financial center and various tourism-related projects. Beyond that is the Yas Island Formula 1 racetrack. Next to the racetrack, in the desert dust, construction cranes mark the spot where Masdar City, the ultimate showcase project for a post-oil future, is being built.

Masdar, the Arabic world for "source," is practically an alchemistic venture, where $22 billion dirty petro-dollars will be transformed into a clean, zero-emissions city, designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster. The new city will also be a center for research and production related to eliminating the fossil-fuel economy.

The students' powerful cars are in parked in the underground garage, but they reach the campus on magnetically controlled electric vehicles known as "pad cars." At the campus, a "wind tower" disperses cooling breezes, and the streets and alleys are designed to take advantage of shade and drafts, as in the traditional old cities of the Arab world.

So far, the project is little more than a showcase for visiting foreign leaders, a fig leaf for a country in which every tree has to be watered with artificially desalinated sea water. But the country is planning for the long term, as Masdar Capital invests in renewable technologies worldwide.

A company from the Emirates is producing solar modules in the eastern German state of Thuringia. Abu Dhabi is a shareholder in Gemasolar in Andalusia in southern Spain, the world's first commercial-scale solar power plant. It has also invested €120 million in the Finnish wind turbine manufacturer Winwind and, in a joint venture with the German utility E.on, is building the world's largest offshore wind farm in the waters off the Thames Estuary.

A 'Clean' City

Masdar may be geared to a time without oil. Nevertheless, this environmental utopia in the desert sand is highly dependent on the price curve. When oil prices collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, the project had to be trimmed considerably.

The concept of a building that produces more energy than it consumes was abandoned, and the entire city was connected to the dirty electric grid. Instead of being referred to as "CO2 neutral," Masdar is now being called "clean."

Many German companies, including Bayer, BASF and Bosch, are involved in the development of Masdar. Electronics giant Siemens is building its headquarters for Asia and the Middle East in the experimental city. These are all companies that ran their businesses on the basis of fossil fuels for decades, and did very well as a result.

Now that conditions are changing dramatically, they are trying to turn adversity into a virtue.

Chemical Giant BASF Bets on Batteries
BASF, the world's largest chemical company, headquartered in the southwestern German city of Ludwigshafen, is more dependent on crude oil than almost any other German business. This is advantageous for BASF, which, thanks to its close business ties to Russian energy giant Gazprom, is benefiting from the record-high prices. But there is also a serious drawback to this dependency: Oil and its products, especially petroleum, are the key raw materials for chemical products like plastics and paints.

"The oil price is currently our biggest concern," concedes CEO Kurt Bock, while presenting an otherwise stellar bottom line. The company currently bases its financial planning on a price level of $110 a barrel. But that picture will change considerably if the price rise, warns Bock.

That's why Bock has recently begun investing in a field that has nothing at all to do with oil. BASF has entered the battery business in a big way and soon hopes to become a major player worldwide. To achieve its goal, BASF is spending several hundred million euros, buying up specialty businesses and hiring dozens of scientists. Many of them work in building M 100 at the northern end of the Ludwigshafen plant grounds. With its high ceilings and wide stone staircases, M 100 feels like an old school building. The building is hallowed ground for every chemist.

A century ago, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed a process there to synthetically produce ammonia, the key prerequisite for the production of synthetic fertilizer, which was a revolution for global food production. Now Andreas Fischer, an electrochemist, is searching for a solution for another problem facing humanity: mobility in the post-fossil age.

Painful Process

Fischer, who has worked for the company since 1997, heads its battery research unit. For many years, electrochemistry tended to be sidelined at BASF, but that has now changed. More than 100 employees are hard at work trying to develop better components for lithium ion batteries. In this case, better means that the batteries must have a high energy density and cannot be subject to as much wear during charging and discharging. They also have to be lightweight, fireproof and affordable.

These are goals that all players in the highly competitive battery market are trying to reach. Everyone wants to be ready when the anticipated wave of electric cars hits the assembly lines. Fischer admits that the Asians are several years ahead when it comes to battery storage in consumer goods like mobile phones. But that is not the case in the business of the car of the future, where, as Fischer says, "the cards are now being reshuffled."

At the end of the year, BASF will begin mass production of cathode materials for batteries at its new plant in the US state of Ohio. But the question of when electromobility achieves its breakthrough and becomes profitable for BASF will not depend solely on the performance of his team, explains Fischer: "The price of gasoline is also a factor."

The higher the gas price, the more worthwhile the investment and the greater the prospects for selling battery technology. In this way, the rising price of oil accelerates structural change in the economy, a painful process for everyone who falls by the wayside. But it is also exceptionally advantageous for those companies that have figured out how to use scarce resources in particularly efficient ways.

More Out of Less

There are many such companies in Germany, such as makers of heat pumps, insulation material and condensing boiler heating systems. One reason they are so strong is that Germans are accustomed to a lack of natural resources. The growing importance of energy efficiency is evident in the fact that a leading trade fair devoted to environment technology, IndustrialGreenTec, will be held in the German city of Hanover for the first time in 2012.

Bosch will also be represented at the trade fair. The engineers at the German automotive parts supplier have made it their goal to use modern technology to reduce fuel consumption in a vehicle in the Volkswagen Golf category from 5.4 liters to 3.6 liters per 100 kilometers (from 44 to 65 miles per gallon). To achieve this, they are using such features as automatic start-stop technology and dispensing with the fourth cylinder.

"You don't notice anything when you're driving," says Bernd Bohr, the head of the vehicle technology division. Bohr and his colleagues are consumed with one question: How do you get more out of less? The answer will also shape Bosch's success as a business. "Resource efficiency is a key growth driver for our company," says Bohr.

The same applies to Mercedes, the world's largest truck maker. The Stuttgart-based company is currently introducing the new Actros, a large truck that will use 5 percent less fuel than the precursor model, partly as a result of a new generation of engine that employs a fuel injection pressure of 2,100 bar. As modest as a 5 percent reduction in fuel consumption sounds, it adds to significant amounts in a business in which energy makes up 35 to 40 percent of total costs.

Andreas Renschler, the head of Daimler's truck division, expects sales to grow as fuel prices go up. "It increases the pressure to replace old trucks, which use more gasoline, with new ones."

Morally Reprehensible

New business opportunities are emerging from the challenges faced by an economy that has to make do with less and less oil. In Germany, the decoupling of prosperity from energy has been happening for some time. Last year, the economy grew by 3 percent while consumption of oil, natural gas and coal declined by almost 5 percent.

But in most countries of the world, especially the emerging countries, economic growth and energy consumption still go hand in hand. A global change of course is overdue, according to the German Advisory Council on Global Change. "The carbon-based world economic model," say the scientists on the council, constitutes "a normatively unsustainable situation" and is as morally reprehensible as slavery or child labor.

With a view to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in mid-June, the nine scientists on the council have prepared a master plan outlining the necessary changes. They include the expansion of renewable energy, as well as increasing the cost of fossil fuels.

Perhaps this will make the transition easier and delay the end of the age of oil a little longer -- by a few years, or perhaps even a decade. Whatever happens, the fossil finale is inevitable.

REPORTED BY DIETMAR HAWRANEK, ALEXANDER JUNG, ALEXANDER SMOLTCZYK AND FLORIAN ZERFASS

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[Rad]

Here is yet another example of Evil hiding behind God. Kony is pure evil and this story from the Congo needs to be spread as far and wide as possible ..........

‘We don’t know of any Kony video’: villagers tell of reality of violent attacks

By The Guardian
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 19:15 EDT

As world attention is drawn to their plight, victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army say their situation is getting worse

“I don’t want to go back home, I’m too scared,” says Brigitte Seleigi, who fled her village after it was attacked by the Lord’s Resistance Army on 10 March, one of a rising number of violent acts by the guerrilla rebel group that has led to displacement of the local population and a growing humanitarian crisis.

Seleigi is in Dungu, the largest town in this part of Province Orientale in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), sitting on a sack of basic food aid provided by the World Food Programme. She is surrounded by thousands of other Congolese villagers who abandoned everything and came to Dungu, some walking more than 30 miles through the night in their desperation to escape the LRA.

Their fear is well-founded. The LRA has existed for more than a quarter of a century, eluding military efforts and negotiations seeking to put a stop to their activities. They first operated in northern Uganda, before pressure from the Ugandan military forced them into eastern DRC in the middle of the last decade.

It also has cells in South Sudan and regions of Central African Republic. LRA fighters have committed massacres, mutilations, and mass rapes; they have abducted thousands of adults and children, using captured minors as sex slaves and child soldiers. Their crimes in this part of DRC have resulted in more than 300,000 people fleeing their homes since the end of 2008.

The LRA is led by the enigmatic and ruthless Joseph Kony, who recently gained worldwide notoriety thanks to the Kony 2012 campaign video released by the American NGO Invisible Children. Dubbed the most viral video of all time, it has been viewed more than 86m times on YouTube. On Tuesday, Invisible Children was due to launch a sequel, Kony 2012 Part II, which it billed as being designed for an international audience, with more details on the LRA.

Invisible Children’s highly emotive plea for the international community, and the US military in particular, to intervene to arrest Kony has attracted praise for raising awareness but also fierce criticism for what is, in some people’s view, a gross over-simplification of a complex conflict.

Not many of the millions who have watched Kony 2012 are in Dungu.

There is barely any mobile telephone reception, and access to the internet is limited. When asked whether they have heard of the video, the villagers shrug and shake their heads. In any case, these people do not need a social media campaign to know who Kony is. They have lived in fear of the LRA for more than 50 years.

“People have been terrorised, seriously traumatised, by repeated attacks by the LRA and the violence and mutilation they have suffered,” says Jorge Holly, head of office for UNHCR in Province Orientale. The mere rumour of an LRA presence is enough to send people scattering into the bush.

Victims of LRA violence are easy to find. Micheline Medu is sitting in the local hospital, her left shoulder heavily bandaged and clutching her nine-month-old baby.

“A month ago we were travelling from Dungu to Bangadi [near the South Sudan border] when I realised shots had been fired from the bush,” she says. “My husband was on a motorbike in front of me and was unharmed. I was hit in the shoulder and we fell. The man on the motorbike behind us was killed.”

The number of incidents involving the LRA has dramatically increased since December 2011, from almost none in the final months of 2011 to 33 so far in 2012, but in nearly every case gratuitous acts of violence have been replaced by pillaging, looting and short-term abductions.

On 24 February the LRA attacked a small settlement six miles from a village called Gangala Na Bodio, on the road back to Dungu. “The rebels came around 2am and went from door to door, looting food, goods, clothes and medicine, and abducting one person,” says Jean-Pierre Bnogoti, head of the village. He is dressed in shabby blue overalls, the only clothes he has left after the attack.

“There were 12 LRA with guns, and five of them were children, around 11 or 12 years old. They fired many shots, shooting into the school. We have many, many traumatised children here.” Some 500 people fled and have stayed away, but more than 300 have decided to return, despite their fears of future attacks.

“We have returned because of the excessive suffering caused by displacement,” says Bnongoti. “We are leading a plea for improved security here. We refuse to abandon our fields that we’ve worked so long to cultivate. We want to be independent and not rely on aid, but we need protection if we are to work in our fields.”

That protection has been lacking for some time. The Congolese army based nearby arrived hours after the LRA had pillaged the village and returned to the bush. “The LRA used lots of bullets,” says one local who witnessed the attack. “The soldiers who eventually came were scared. They knew they didn’t have the numbers or the equipment that the rebels had.”

Even providing aid without adequate security is a risk. “The LRA come for our goods and possessions, so when we receive aid they just attack again,” says Bnongoti. “But without the aid, without food, water and clothes, we will die.”

The villagers facing these desperate choices, the people in overcrowded IDP camps in and around Dungu, and the staff working at overstretched and under-resourced humanitarian agencies in the region, all return to one fundamental need: improved security that would allow people to leave the camps and return home.

“At the start of the crisis the population around Dungu was 5,000,” says Holly. “Today there are 20,000 people due to the IDPs, and access to land has been enormously reduced by security perimeters around the town. Of course villagers want to go back but first they want to know they’ll be protected.”

The overcrowding is creating tensions between indigenous and displaced people over access to land, aid and services like school places, as well as the inevitable sanitation and hygiene problems.

In October 2011 Barack Obama deployed 100 US military advisers to the region to help in the fight against the LRA and to improve security. Two of those advisers are in Dungu.

Any military intervention carries high risks, however.

“All we ask is that they are well co-ordinated. We don’t want another situation like in 2008,” says local civil society leader Father Benoit Kinalegu, referring to another US-advised offensive against the LRA that was unsuccessful and led to the reprisal Christmas massacres of civilians in 2008 and 2009. The massacre at Makombo saw 300 people butchered and 150 abducted.

“If they [the Americans and Congolese army] plan their operations badly then it is very dangerous. But we hope they will do it professionally, and will succeed in protecting the local population,” says Kinalegu.

Back in Gangala Na Bodio, Nalunga Tungati, who was also abducted by the LRA, agrees.

“If the US soldiers come and do their job we will be very happy, but we have seen no sign of them yet.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2012

[Rad]

Rebel clashes in Timbuktu prompts concern for ancient treasures

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 17:40 EDT

The seizure of Timbuktu by a fractious group of separatist and Islamist rebels in northern Mali has raised fears for the fate of the legendary city’s ancient manuscripts and architectural treasures.

Timbuktu, a cradle of Islamic learning and a thriving trade centre in its 16th-century heyday, was overrun Sunday by Tuareg separatists and Islamist rebels.

Witnesses said the Islamists then chased the Tuareg fighters from the city, increasing fears the accelerating violence since Mali’s government was overthrown in a coup could endanger Timbuktu’s rich archives and historic mosques.

“Unique manuscripts have been conserved for centuries in Timbuktu, a scholarly city, a city of 333 saints, where practically every household is a heritage site, a library,” Hamady Bocoum, head of African research institute IFAN, told AFP.

“I think there are serious risks to those manuscripts.”

Mali has been in turmoil since a band of low-ranking army officers ousted the government on March 22, saying President Amadou Toumani Toure had failed to stand up to the Tuareg insurgency.

The power vacuum played into the hands of the insurgents, who have captured key towns in the vast arid north virtually unopposed.

The fall of Timbuktu, followed by in-fighting between the motley crew of Tuareg and Islamist rebel groups, has kept the city and its history under threat.

Timbuktu is home to nearly 100,000 ancient manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century, preserved in family homes and private libraries under the care of religious scholars.

At its height in the 1500s, the city, a Niger River port at the edge of the Sahara, was the key intersection for salt traders traveling from the north and gold traders from the south.

It was also a renowned centre of Islamic scholarship, with manuscripts written in Arabic and Fulani by scholars of the ancient Mali empire, covering a range of subjects including Islam, history, astronomy, music, botany, genealogy and anatomy.

Bocoum worried manuscripts could be illegally sold or destroyed by the “new arrivals”, who reportedly include Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the north African branch of Al-Qaeda.

“These manuscripts have survived through the ages thanks to a secular order, in an area of trade where all the region’s peoples intersect. With the arrival of the Islamists, that secular order is broken, that culture is in danger,” he said.

The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO also issued a plea Tuesday to protect the city’s history.

“Timbuktu’s outstanding earthen architectural wonders that are the great mosques of Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia must be safeguarded,” said UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova in a statement.

She called the city “essential to the preservation of the identity of the people of Mali and of our universal heritage”.

UNESCO added Timbuktu to its World Heritage List in 1988 in recognition of its status as a legendary trade hub and its history stretching back to the 5th century.

The owner of one of the city’s private libraries said he fears for his collection.

“I really don’t know at the moment what’s going to become of my manuscripts,” he said.

“I’m waiting. But frankly I’m afraid.”

[Rad]

Syrian troops enter rebel areas despite ceasefire pledge

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 16:20 EDT

Fierce clashes erupted on Tuesday as Syria’s regime sent reinforcements into rebel areas despite a truce pledge, and the UN said it was rushing a team to Damascus to pave the way for peace monitors.

The surge in violence killed at least 38 people, including 25 civilians, mostly in north and central Syria, and saw a string of arson attacks on homes, activists and monitors said.

It came a day after peace envoy Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that President Bashar al-Assad had given assurances he would “immediately” start pulling back his forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.

Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Tuesday pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he met the organisation’s head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily humanitarian ceasefire.

But the United States accused Assad of failing to honour his pledged troop withdrawal, as monitors reported heavy fighting in opposition strongholds in the southern region of Daraa, the central city of Homs, northwestern Idlib province and near the capital.

Dozens of armoured personnel carriers arrived in Dael, a town in Daraa province where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, as well as in Zabadani, a bastion of the rebellion near the border with Lebanon.

Clashes in the Atbaa area of Daraa province left three civilians and two soldiers dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In Idlib, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the town of Taftanaz, where five civilians, four rebels and seven soldiers were killed amid heavy machinegun fire and shelling, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

Clashes killed two civilians elsewhere in the province.

In central Homs, 10 civilians were killed in shelling of several neighbourhoods of the city and five others died in fighting elsewhere in the province.

The Observatory has charged that the army is torching and looting rebel houses across Syria in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity.

Washington said on Tuesday that Assad was failing to live up to pledges for a truce.

“The assertion to Kofi Annan was that Assad would start implementing his commitments immediately to withdraw from cities. I want to advise that we have seen no evidence today that he is implementing any of those commitments,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

In Geneva, a spokesman for Annan said the office of the UN-Arab League envoy expected a “UN advance team on the deployment of monitors to arrive in Syria in the next 48 hours.”

In a briefing Monday to the Security Council, Annan sought a broad mandate for the monitoring mission as he reported “no progress” on reaching a ceasefire, according to diplomats.

The Council was also told it could take at least two months to get a full mission of about 250 observers into Syria if a ceasefire is declared, one diplomat said.

Syria’s UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, confirmed the April 10 date had been agreed “by common accord” between Annan and his government.

The partial implementation of Annan’s six-point peace plan would include a full cessation of hostilities within 48 hours of the deadline, according to diplomats in New York.

The United States, Britain and France were to send the Security Council a draft statement on Tuesday putting a formal stamp on the deadline and warning Assad of possible “further measures” if he reneges on the truce, they said.

Russia, Assad’s veto-wielding ally in the Council, has rejected the idea of a deadline, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying “ultimatums and artificial deadlines rarely help matters.”

International Committee of the Red Cross chief Kellenberger, on his third mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his trip that he would seek a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.

Kellenberger also met Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar, with state news agency SANA saying their talks focused on how the ministry can facilitate the ICRC’s work in Syria “regarding the inspection of penal facilities and meeting inmates in them.”

The Syrian authorities allowed the ICRC to visit the central prison in Damascus for the first time last year.

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/03/2012 05:54 PM

Africa's Forgotten War: The Bloody, Invisible Battle for South Kordofan

By Horand Knaup in Gidel, Sudan

Although Sudan and South Sudan are officially at peace, a brutal war rages in the border province of South Kordofan. Civilians are the primary victims of President Omar Bashir's fragmentation bombs, but the world has taken little notice of the violence.

One minute per patient, and even that is a luxury. When Doctor Tom makes his rounds, his time is a valuable commodity. There's just enough of it to ask the patient a quick question, wipe clean a festering wound and make a quick note on the chart, then it's time to move on. Whether it's a forearm that's been torn off, grenade shrapnel in a patient's abdomen or a 15-year-old girl who fell into the fire while suffering an epileptic seizure, there's no other way, Doctor Tom has to do everything quickly. With 290 patients and one doctor, there's no time for sympathetic chats, and there are always more injuries to be treated.

"Welcome to Gidel," Doctor Tom says. Evening has arrived in South Kordofan and the air, blisteringly hot at midday, has cooled to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Doctor Tom is back at the nearby Catholic mission, still wearing his green scrubs and still carrying the weight of trying to pull nearly 300 patients through. The only thing he's left behind at the hospital is his stethoscope.

Doctor Tom, 47, real name Thomas Catena, has metal-rimmed glasses, several days' worth of stubble and an ascetic build. He's an American and a devout Christian. Every morning, he hurries to the mission's chapel to pray. Catena was previously a military doctor and has also worked in Nairobi's slums and at hospitals in Kenya. He knows the very worst sides of Africa -- which is why he stayed here in Gidel when the Sudanese government sealed the borders around the province of South Kordofan about 10 months ago, when the first bombs fell and everyone else left, the NGOs, the director of the hospital, even the anesthetic assistant.

But even as they departed, increasing numbers of patients arrived. They came because bombs kept falling, because Doctor Tom was there and because aside from a small outpost run by Cap Anamur, a German medical aid organization, Gidel has the only hospital within a radius of around 150 kilometers (90 miles). "This is a textbook example of a civil war," Doctor Tom says, sipping his water.

The Invisible Civil War

No one knows Gidel, a dusty little place, and hardly anyone knows South Kordofan or the Nuba Mountains. South Kordofan, nearly twice as large as Austria, forms a sort of buffer state, its territory belonging to Sudan but directly bordering South Sudan, an independent country since last July.

It's a fertile region, rich in minerals -- and oil. And perhaps there would be no reason to know about South Kordofan if it weren't currently the site of a drama similar to the one unfolding in Syria: a dictator, an undeclared war, a population taken hostage, bombs and grenades that target primarily civilians. But there are no bloggers in the Nuba Mountains, no YouTube videos, no media-savvy rebels. This war is taking place largely away from the world's eyes. A recent protest in Washington, at which Hollywood star George Clooney was briefly arrested, did little to change the situation.

The conflict began in June of 2011, just days after elections for governor in South Kordofan. The governor appointed by the national government in Khartoum, Ahmed Haroun, supposedly won. Haroun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes.

But no one believed Haroun's victory, and there was talk of massive electoral fraud. The indisputable leader of the Nuba region is Abdul Aziz, an experienced rebel who fought with the SPLA-North, the Nuba branch of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in the civil war against the North.

When Aziz's people refused after the contested election to lay down their weapons and integrate themselves into Khartoum's army, President Omar al-Bashir banned aid organizations from the region and sent in tanks and planes instead.

'Now They're Paying For It'

There has been war in South Kordofan ever since, fueled no doubt by the fact that South Kordofan sits astride three significant dividing lines: The region marks the divide between Christianity and Islam, as well as between Arabs and Black Africans. And, since last year, it also divides the countries of South Sudan and Sudan.

"People in Nuba fought on the side of the South, and now they're paying for it," says Bishop Macram Gassis. Seventy-three years old and not in the best of health, the bishop is nonetheless perfectly alert. He fled to Nairobi, Kenya, because his poor health renders the grueling and dangerous trip overland to Gidel impossible. In the past, he would fly from Kenya to South Kordofan, but commercial planes are grounded now that Antonov bombers from Khartoum control the region's airspace.

Bishop Gassis oversees the diocese where people are now being shot and killed.

Gassis has never made a secret of his animosity toward al-Bashir, particularly since Gassis himself grew up in Khartoum and went to university there. Eventually the bishop was no longer tolerated in the country, and went abroad. Christians make up only a small minority in the Nuba Mountains, but are accepted by the Muslim majority there, perhaps partly because their projects -- including the hospital in Gidel, schools, and a radio station -- have brought a bit of progress to this remote, mountainous region.

Al-Bashir's government, on the other hand, has always neglected the development of the Nuba Mountains. There are no roads, hardly any schools, no healthcare. None of the income from the region's gushing oil reserves ever makes it back to South Kordofan, because people in the Nuba Mountains aren't proper Arabs, because they eat pork and sometimes drink alcohol, and because they demonstrated sympathy for South Sudan's autonomy.

'Either Operate Yourself -- Or Let Them Die'
"To Khartoum's Muslims, they're second-class," says Bishop Gassis. And at some point, they were no longer willing to be neglected.

Now al-Bashir is waging war against them. The president's preferred method is to operate from the air, with bombs designed to fragment on impact. The result of that tactic is easy to see at the hospital in Gidel. Despite Tom Catena being the only doctor there, it is considered the best equipped in all of South Kordofan. And it's hopelessly overcrowded.

Mutassir Amdaraman is one person who owes his life to Doctor Tom. A lively child, just 14 months old, Mutassir is once again laughing, babbling and toddling about. The only thing missing is his right arm.

It happened in early January in the village of Ongolo. "They heard the Antonovs coming," explains his grandmother Samir. "My daughter was carrying Mutassir. They were trying to run down to the river, but they didn't make it."

The bombers were faster. Eight people died, including Mutassir's mother. The child's upper arm was shredded by shrapnel. When he arrived in Gidel after a two-hour drive, all that was left of his arm was a scrap of flesh hanging from his shoulder. Now his grandmother Samir, herself just 32 years old, is taking care of the child.

Seeking Shelter in Caves

This is all part of everyday life for Tom Catena. The doctor operated on over 1,500 patients in 2011. "You don't have the option of transferring them to a better hospital," he says. "You only have the choice of doing it yourself -- or letting them die."

Many thousands of people have fled south from the Nuba region. There are 30,000 refugees stranded just in the dusty border town of Yida, between Sudan and South Sudan. Others have retreated to the mountains, where they seek shelter from the bombs in caves or under rock ledges.

Politically, the situation is at a standstill. Geographically and according to the 1956 borders drawn by the British that still form the basis for the north-south divide, South Kordofan belongs to the North. But Khartoum has never valued the Nuba region's residents. For centuries, the Arabs used them as slaves, and made no investments in the region. The area served as a buffer between North and South in a civil war that dragged on for 23 years.

Then came the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between North and South, and a serious political lapse. The two sides couldn't agree on what to do with the contested provinces of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Both provinces had fought on the side of the South in the civil war, but both belonged geographically to the North's territory.

John Garang, the South's rebel leader who later died in a helicopter crash, didn't want the issue to ruin South Sudan's chance at independence. South Kordofan and Blue Nile were left out of the peace accord, with a vague agreement that the matter would be decided by a "popular consultation," or referendum, in both provinces.

That referendum never took place, and for good reason from al-Bashir's perspective. In Gidel, for example, the majority opinion would be clear.

A Permanent Break

The town's administrative secretary shows up on his motorbike. Kuku Barnabas, 35, hasn't received a salary in months. His pay, of course, used to come from Khartoum, and nothing comes from Khartoum anymore, no pay, no gasoline, no medicine, nothing. And yet Barnabas wouldn't return to the old days. "They faked the election," he says. "They know all the things they can get from the Nuba Mountains: oil, gold, charcoal. And they knew they would lose all of that if they lost the election."

What does Barnabas see as a solution? "We belong to the South," he says. "The North wants to Islamize us. It will never work out with them."

It does seem as if a permanent break has been made. Major General Izak Kuku, 50, and his troops have dug in along the road from Gidel to Yida. Under the scrubby branches of acacia trees, the soldiers have set up tents, pick-up trucks and tankers, forming a camp that's barely visible from the air. Every person here carries a Kalashnikov, even the cook's assistant, and ammunition crates serve as benches.

Kuku himself is in plainclothes -- he's about to go out, and doesn't want to be recognized on the road as a general. He apologizes for the makeshift arrangements. "We're guerrillas," he says. "Our office is still under construction." Kuku has fought against Khartoum since 1985, 20 of those years as part of the civil war.

No Conclusive Answer

He comes to the point: "The Arabs simply don't want us here. They only want our resources, the oil, the gold, the minerals -- and they'd like us to just disappear." Kuku isn't interested in annexation to South Sudan, he says, "but it won't work with al-Bashir either." He describes how once before, in 1992, Misseriya Arabs incited by Khartoum killed hundreds of Black Nuba residents.

Now, Kuku is optimistic. Two thirds of South Kordofan is in rebel hands, he says. But the real problem is still on the horizon. With so many bomb attacks, he explains, farmers were not really able to do their planting, and only sometimes able to harvest their crops. "There will be hunger," the general says.

Barnabas, the young administrative secretary in Gidel, has the same worry. But before he swings himself back onto his motorcycle, he asks the question that's on everyone's mind in the Nuba Mountains, one for which there is no conclusive answer.

Barnabas talks himself into a rage, and nearly shouts his question: "Why isn't the world helping us? Why did they spend six months intervening against Gadhafi in Libya -- and why not in South Kordofan?"

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/03/2012 01:38 PM

The World from Berlin: 'Burmese Reform Process Not Yet Irreversible'

The victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy on Sunday in Burma marks an important milestone on the country's road to greater political freedoms. But there remains much to be done, warn German commentators on Tuesday.

It is the most surprising moment yet in Burma's surprising turnaround from military dictatorship to, perhaps, budding democracy. In a by-election held on Sunday, the party of democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi walked away with nothing short of a landslide victory. With final results still pending in some remote regions, the country's election commission announced on Monday that the National League for Democracy had walked away with 40 of the 45 seats up for a vote. The final total may even be higher.

Even more significantly, Suu Kyi's party took all four of the seats open in Naypyitaw, a city purpose-built as the country's new capital in 2006 and largely populated by government bureaucrats.

"It is not so much our triumph as a triumph of the people who have decided that they have to be involved in the political process in this country," Suu Kyi said. "We hope this will be the beginning of a new era."

A Bid for the Presidency?

For the moment, it would appear that such hopes are justified. While the election only involved a small number of the 664 seats in the national and regional parliaments, it shows that the country, ruled by a military junta until just last year, remains serious about reform. Hopes are now high for the 2015 general elections, with some suggesting that Suu Kyi could even make a bid for the presidency.

Still, even as the military has significantly relaxed its stranglehold on power in the last 12 months -- by releasing Suu Kyi from house arrest, abolishing the military junta and freeing up the country's press -- far-reaching reforms are still needed. The constitution still guarantees the country's military 25 percent of all seats in parliament and forbids anyone with foreign relatives from serving as president -- which includes Suu Kyi herself, who married a British national and has two children who were born and live abroad.

But the progress made thus far by President Thein Sein has been rapid. After abolishing the junta last year, the country went on to release political prisoners, establish ceasefires with rebel groups and win international praise for its progress toward democracy. Leaders also began an open dialogue with Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Many are now calling for European Union and US sanctions against the country to be lifted, as both parties have indicated may happen soon. "We do expect the foreign ministers will recognize the changes and there will be a positive signal from the Council," EU foreign affairs spokesman Maja Kocijancic said.

German commentators on Tuesday take a look at developments in Burma.

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Aung San Suu Kyi's transformation from an oppressed activist into a holder of a political mandate is not yet proof for the victory of democracy. She has entered into a pragmatic alliance with those who have harassed her for years. And she has joined a parliament which is still largely made up of members who are close to the military. Still, her leeway has become greater. She now has a public stage within the system from which to push for further reform. She has won her fight for political survival."

"Furthermore, her power is greater than that of a simple holder of a seat in parliament. She is in a position to exert significant control over the West's careful opening up to Burma. The US and the EU would likely not loosen sanctions against the country against her will."

"Now, however, the time for the lifting of those sanctions has arrived. The hardliners and those committed to the old order have been marginalized, if not completely shunted aside. A far-reaching loosening of penalties would be the most sensible way to support the path President Sein has embarked upon."

Center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"A Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi as its leader would be proof to many of the happy ending to an at times horrible fairy tale. But political history doesn't often offer much that is reminiscent of a fairy tale and in Burma, there are at least two lurking demons. One of those can be found in the old regime which fears for its power and which can extinguish both Suu Kyi and the hopes of the Burmese overnight."

"The other demon can be found within Suu Kyi herself. As great as the expectations of the oppressed people of Burma are, even a fairy with supernatural powers would have a difficult time not disappointing them. And Suu Kyi herself is the daughter of a general … she is not a child of the people, rather more of a political heiress with a tendency toward authoritarianism. Some are wondering whether she will be able to satisfy the yearning for equitable leadership and the almost insatiable hunger for democracy and prosperity."

Left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The glowing victor of Sunday's elections, Suu Kyi, must quickly answer the question as to whether she wants to transform the informal partnership with President Thein Sein for more democracy into a solid relationship. It seems likely, however, that she will find it more tempting to turn the parliament into her stage and strengthen democracy there…. Meanwhile, the West must focus on strengthening Thein Sein. Because, as Suu Kyi herself has continuously emphasized, the reform process in Burma is not yet irreversible."

-- Charles Hawley

[Rad]

Mali slips into chaos as world gropes for response

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, April 5, 2012 7:19 EDT

Fears mounted Thursday that Al Qaeda-linked Islamists were turning Mali into a rogue state despite the announcement by Tuareg rebels that their 10-week military offensive was complete.

As the Tuareg trumpeted the success of a decades-old struggle to “liberate” their homeland, their fundamentalist comrades-turned-rivals began imposing sharia in northern Mali, also leaving an embattled junta looking very vulnerable in Bamako.

The UN Security Council on Wednesday called for an immediate ceasefire but proposed no firm action to reverse a sequence that has seen a country hailed as a democratic success story descend into chaos in barely two weeks.

The United States, which had grown increasingly concerned since the collapse of Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya scattered weapons across the region, engaged talks with Algeria, the most powerful of Mali’s seven neighbours.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika met General Carter Ham, who heads the US Command for Africa (AFRICOM) in Algiers on Wednesday.

They had in-depth talks on the security situation in Mali, Carter told the Algerian news agency.

Military cooperation and anti-terrorism coordination were also discussed during the talks, attended by several other top officials from both sides, including Washington’s top Africa diplomat Johnnie Carson.

Three of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) top leaders, all of them Algerians, were spotted in the Malian city of Timbuktu in talks with Iyad Ag Ghaly, a former Tuareg rebel who recently founded the Islamist group Ansar Dine.

The group, whose name means “Defenders of Faith” in Arabic, has ordered women to wear headscarves and threatened to cut off the hands of thieves in the city, once known as the “pearl of the desert” and once the jewel in Mali’s burgeoning tourism industry.

The junta in Bamako and local residents have alleged that women were being kidnapped and raped by the city’s new masters.

Former colonial power France has voiced fears that while the Tuaregs’ territorial claims could be addressed through negotiation, the Islamist advance is a threat to the entire region.

Residents and security sources said the Islamists have chased the Tuareg group Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) out of Timbuktu, burning their flag and replacing it with their black jihad flag.

“Ansar Dine has allowed MNLA elements to stay behind at the airport” just outside the town, a security source said. A hotelier said there were less than 20 Tuareg rebels stationed there.

But on their website, the group said it was “holding its position in the face of all these mafia networks and distances itself from Ansar Dine and others who rise up on the path to the liberation of Azawad”.

The UN hammered out a joint statement Wednesday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Mali, prompting the MNLA to declare an end to military operations “after the complete liberation of the Azawad territory”.

The world body also condemned the coup by a group of low-ranking army officers who took control of the capital Bamako on March 22 and ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure just weeks before he was due to step down.

The junta, which came to power in what some observers have described as “an accidental coup”, was struggling to assert its authority.

The new military rulers’ efforts to restore order fell apart as a coalition of some 50 political parties and 100 civil society organisations refused to take part in a proposed national meeting on the country’s future.

The junta, which had planned the meeting for Thursday, was quickly forced to postpone it.

The mutineers had justified their coup by arguing that Toure’s regime had failed to effectively tackle the Tuareg uprising but the rebels have since then conquered a chunk of territory larger than France virtually unopposed.

In an interview with the French dailies Le Monde and Liberation published Thursday, coup leader begged Western powers to help him counter the Islamist push in the north.

“If the great powers are able to cross oceans to battle fundamentalist structures in Afghanistan, what’s stopping them coming to us? Our committee wants the best for the country,” he said.

The crisis precipitated by Sanogo’s coup also sparked mounting concern that a massive regional humanitarian emergency fueled by conflict and drought was developing.

More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes since the Tuareg rebels launched their offensive on January 17.

[Rad]

Poland to ban Monsanto’s genetically modified maize

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 18:07 EDT

WARSAW — Poland will impose a complete ban on growing the MON810 genetically modified strain of maize made by US company Monsanto on its territory, Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki said Wednesday.

“The decree is in the works. It introduces a complete ban on the MON810 strain of maize in Poland,” Sawicki told reporters, adding that pollen of this strain could have a harmful effect on bees.

On March 9, seven European countries — Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland and Slovakia — blocked a proposal by the Danish EU presidency to allow the cultivation of genetically-modified plants on the continent.

Seven days after that, France imposed a temporary ban on the MON810 strain.

Talks on allowing the growing of genetically-modified plants on EU soil are now deadlocked as no majority has emerged among the 27 member states.

[Rad]

New research proves rising carbon dioxide levels led to climate change before

By Fiona Harvey, The Guardian
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 15:30 EDT

A scientific conundrum that has puzzled climate experts for years may have been solved with the publication of research showing how an increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere contributed to rising temperatures millions of years ago.

The paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, has wide-ranging implications for climate science, because the question of whether a rise in carbon dioxide leads to an increase in temperature – or whether rising temperatures lead to an increase in carbon dioxide – has been seized on by climate sceptics eager to disprove a link between atmospheric carbon and global warming.

It also suggests that imminent “runaway” climate change – whereby our actions in pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere contribute to melting permafrost or sea changes that release stores of methane – is a real possibility.

Commenting on the findings, Prof Mark Maslin of University College London said: �

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/05/2012 12:28 PM

Botella's Battle: Madrid's Mayor Chips Away at Debt and Tradition

By Helene Zuber

Spain is frantically trying to reduce its debts. While conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is doing so at the national level, Ana Botella is slashing away at spending in Madrid, Spain's most heavily indebted city. In the process, the mayor is blazing her own path.

When Ana Botella looks up from the files in her office on the fifth floor of Madrid's city hall, she sees the crown of a fertility goddess. The marble statue of Cibeles standing in a chariot being pulled by lions is the centerpiece of a busy plaza in the Spanish capital. On good days, the players and fans of Real Madrid, the city's league-leading soccer club, celebrate their victories in the square in front of the Cibeles Fountain.

Last Thursday wasn't one of those days. Instead of jubilant soccer fans, there were tens of thousands of protestors waving red flags in front of the fountain just below the balcony of Botella's office. They were protesting against the fact that over 5 million of their fellow citizens are unemployed and against the austerity measures imposed by the conservative federal government, which are plunging many families into poverty.

That morning, inside city hall, Botella and the city council had decided to free up about €1 million ($1.3 million) in funds so that rents could be reduced for the city's poorest residents living in subsidized housing.

Indeed, these are hard times on Cibeles Square. Madrid's mayor still has to pay over €1 billion for 16,712 outstanding bills from 2011 as well as try to get the finances of Spain's most heavily indebted city under control. And she needs to do so as quickly as possible.

Inherited Burdens

Ana Botella, 58, the wife of former conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, has been Madrid's mayor since the end of December. Before that, she had served eight years as a city councilor, initially for family and social affairs and, most recently, for transportation and the environment. Rather than being elected to the office, Botella inherited it from her predecessor after he was brought into the administration of Mariano Rajoy, a fellow party member who became Spain's prime minister in November.

Botella inherited not only the office with the best view, a room larger than the Oval Office in Washington, in a 1917 palace that was converted into the city hall at a cost of €500 million, but also the services of a butler whose sole duty is to serve coffee to her and her guests. But she has also inherited close to €6.4 billion in debts.

By the end of March, Botella had to present the Finance Ministry with an austerity plan demonstrating that the city's future expenditures would no longer exceed its revenues. She had to draft this plan because the government of conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy enacted a law last week that will impose sanctions on public administrations that continue to incur new debts.

In this sense, the mayor's position is not unlike that of the prime minister. For the 2012 budget, which he approved in the Council of Ministers last Friday, he will have to make over €27 billion in cuts and collect more than €12 billion in additional taxes.

Rajoy's socialist predecessor as prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, also left behind a dubious legacy: a deficit of 8.5 percent of GDP, which is much higher than what had been agreed to with Brussels. The current administration is now expected to reduce the deficit to 3 percent of GDP by the end of 2013 -- a promise that Spain must keep at all costs if it hopes to regain the confidence of its European partners and the financial markets.

Unlike the prime minister, Botella cannot blame a political rival on the left for the city's past wasteful habits. Instead, it was her predecessor, a conservative, who had increased Madrid's debt by a factor of five. He had a ring of expressways built around the city and pursued Madrid's candidacy as a host city for the Olympics twice. In the process, he spent many millions on stadiums that are now underused. The new mayor wants to continue the city's bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, arguing that most of the infrastructure has already been built, -- and that it's also important for a society to have its dreams. But, as far as everything else is concerned, she champions a tough new austerity course.

A New Political Style

Botella, a lawyer and devout Catholic, isn't the worst choice to manage the city in its current plight. "I married at 23 and supported my family during the first few years," Botella say proudly. She worked as a civil servant in the administration, most recently in the Finance Ministry. She only stopped working when her husband, whom she brought into the conservative People's Alliance party in the late 1970s, became prime minister in 1996 and the family of five moved into the Moncloa Palace, the prime minister's official residence. She keeps a photo from the night of the election on the bookshelf next to her desk.

As the wife of the prime minister, she was derided for wearing leather jackets from a cheap retail store on official trips. She also raised eyebrows once when she appeared in jeans and a plain jacket instead of an evening gown at a reception for the royal couple.

Today, she also embodies a new style. Her predecessor in Madrid's city hall was fond of luxury and fancied himself an excellent, well-read speaker. Botella, on the other hand, wears off-the-rack dresses and hardly any real jewelry. What's more, she stiffly adheres to her prepared speeches -- partly out of a fear of repeating the kinds of gaffes she has previously made in remarks about homosexuals or people on the left.

City Belt-Tightening

But the thing most demanded of politicians these days is strict bookkeeping. Four years ago, when the real estate bubble burst, one of the main sources of revenues for Spain's municipal administrations dried up. Cities could no longer collect nearly as many fees for issuing building permits, and they also lacked the trade tax revenues from construction contractors.

What's more, many companies in the construction sector were forced to declare bankruptcy. While companies are required to pay value-added tax upfront to the tax authorities, the customers -- and especially those in the public sector -- were unable to make their payments to the companies during the crisis.

Now the Rajoy government has promised assistance. Heavily indebted cities can now borrow money for 10 years, at an interest rate of only 5 percent, from a €35 billion fund managed by the National Credit Institute. The city of Madrid will avail itself of the offer beginning in May so that it can finally pay close to 1,700 suppliers and craftsmen. Nevertheless, the mayor still realizes she has to trim her future spending and seek out additional sources of revenue.

To do so, Botella plans to start selling city assets, including buildings and commercial interests, to local businesses, such as the water utility. She has also made €130 million in cuts, reduced the size of the city's motor pool, dismissed advisers, put the redesign of Madrid's art district on hold and slashed subsidies for programs helping drug addicts and first-time employees.

Cutting State Spending

In addition to municipalities, Rajoy must also restructure the country's 17 "autonomous communities," which are regions comparable with Germany's federal states. Primarily responsibility for the fact that government spending has spun out of control lies with these regions. The new government and the overwhelmingly conservative governors of these regions have agreed to impose debt ceilings. But since it will probably be impossible to stay below these levels without additional cuts in spending on education, health care and social benefits, many state-owned companies will be privatized or dissolved.

On the weekend before last, voters gave Prime Minister Rajoy his first warning. The leftists won an election in the southern region of Andalusia, where unemployment stands at 31 percent, or 8 percent above the national average. They had promised to guarantee the blessings of the welfare state instead of focusing exclusively on austerity measures.

Rajoy's tactic of keeping his budget plan a secret in the run-up to the regional elections failed. With his bid to avoid upsetting voters, he had risked triggering a lot of resentment at the European Commission in Brussels. His Italian counterpart, Mario Monti, even voiced his "concern" over Spain's reliability, and the risk premium for Spanish government bonds went up.

Shortly after coming into office, Rajoy used his absolute majority in parliament to implement a tightening of the labor-market reforms launched by his predecessor, Zapatero. It now enables troubled companies to cut wages and lay off employees without having to pay substantial severance packages. The conservatives believe that the new law will lead to the signing of more employment contracts in the long term. Despite the general strike, Rajoy intends to stand his ground.

The government wants the savings banks, whose books are burdened by mortgages at risk of default as well as by devalued real estate, to quickly coalesce into larger institutions. For the coming months, Rajoy has also announced additional and "equally important" reforms in government services for the public administration and in the energy sector. The budget approved by his cabinet will force all ministries to cut spending by at least 17 percent and freeze all civil-servant salaries.

Time for Drastic Changes

Still, this is all far from enough. The Euro Group, made up of the finance ministers of the 17 euro-zone member states, is demanding that Spain reduce its deficit to 5.3 percent of GDP by the end of the year, and it plans to monitor the country's progress. This has prompted Rajoy to go against his campaign promises by raising some taxes after all. The increase in income tax rates, limited to two years for now, has been in effect since January, and the tax burden for large companies will also be increased.

Union leaders and opposition parties on the left have been arguing that the brutal austerity course is only expanding the army of the unemployed, will curtail consumption and will deepen the recession. Nevertheless, Rajoy remains confident. "The worst mistake is to do nothing," he said

As Rajoy makes these changes, no elections will stand in his way for at least 12 months. Mayor Botella has even more time. Madrid residents will not be voting for a new mayor until 2015. Then the woman who inherited her office might finally be elected.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[Rad]

Malawi president dies, leaving nation in suspense

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, April 6, 2012 6:50 EDT

Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika has died after a heart attack, a hospital source said Friday, but the government’s official silence has created political suspense over his succession.

The impoverished nation was plunged into a long night of intrigue after Mutharika’s heart attack in the capital Lilongwe. He was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to save him, a source at the hospital said.

Mutharika “died… after two hours of resuscitation”, shortly after midnight, the hospital source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government has not yet made a formal announcement.

Mutharika was reported by state radio to have been airlifted to South Africa in the early morning hours.

Reporters at the airport in Lilongwe said they were chased from the terminal during the night departure.

Neither the South African government nor hospital officials in Johannesburg could comment on Mutharika, saying only Malawi’s government was authorised to speak about the president.

The hospital source in Lilongwe said that he was taken to South Africa to be embalmed, in a move widely seen as an attempt by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party to get its house in order over the succession issue.

Under the constitution, Vice President Joyce Banda is next in line. But that succession is politically fraught because Mutharika kicked her out of the ruling party in 2010 as he chose to groom his brother as heir apparent instead of her.

Her expulsion angered many urban voters who saw the move as an attempt by Mutharika to concentrate his power.

Mutharika, a former World Bank economist who first came to power in 2004, was re-elected with a sweeping majority in 2009 as president of the poor southern African country.

But he has increasingly come under fire for attempts to rein in the media and to shield the government from public criticism.

His feuds with donors and lenders like the International Monetary Fund have hamstrung the economy in an aid-dependent nation, which is suffering from shortages of foreign currency that have left Malawi unable to import enough fuel to meet its needs.

Public frustrations erupted into nationwide street protests in July, when police shot 19 people dead. Last month a broad coalition of rights groups called on Mutharika to resign.

Malawi suffered for decades under the brutal dictatorship of Kamuzu Banda, and is proud of its hard-fought democratic freedoms ushered in with multi-party elections in 1994.

Any attempt to circumvent the constitution would certainly meet with resistance, analysts said.

“It’s automatic that she takes over the presidency. The reality on the ground is that Joyce Banda takes over until the remainder of the term in 2014, unless someone wants to change the rules,” lawyer Wapona Kita told AFP.

Kita said the constitution “clearly states that in the event of incapacitation or death of the president, the vice president takes over.”

Banda formed her own People’s Party after being sacked from the ruling party. Mutharika then filed a case at the High Court seeking to force her from office, arguing that his running mate had become an opposition figure.

The official silence has heightened anxieties in Malawi, with the Daily Times writing that Malawians are in “huge suspense” over the president.

“The nation’s suspense has been intensified after high-profile officials who included several cabinet ministers arrived at the hospital and went straight to the intensive care unit,” it said. “After some time, they trooped out with sad faces and without a word.”

The Nation, another independent newspaper, criticised the government’s handling of Mutharika’s hospitalisation.

“It is time to do things well through provision of timely information,” the paper said, adding that the government “could have done better than the sketchy statements broadcast on state radio — as almost everyone was left guessing.”

[Rad]

Drug-resistant malaria spreading rapidly in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, April 5, 2012 17:00 EDT

Deadly malaria that is resistant to drug treatment has spread rapidly to the border between Thailand and Myanmar, raising concerns of an uncontrollable epidemic, scientists said Thursday.

A pair of studies published in The Lancet and the journal Science showed how the disease is moving fast into new territory and identified a region of the parasite’s genome that may be responsible for mutating in order to survive.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease commonly caused by a parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, that kills up to 1.2 million people year according to 2010 estimates by by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Malaria that was resistant to treatment with the current standard therapy, artemisinin, was confirmed in Cambodia in 2006 and has since surged 800 kilometers (500 miles) westward to the Thailand-Myanmar border, the researchers said.

By studying 3,202 patients along the northwestern border of Thailand near Myanmar from 2001 and 2010 and measuring the time it took them to clear malaria infections from their blood after treatment, scientists were able to show a steady increase in drug resistance.

The number of slow-clearing infections rose from 0.6 percent of cases treated in 2001 to 20 percent in 2010.

In western Cambodia, 42 percent of malaria cases were resistant between 2007 and 2010, indicating that the Thailand-Myanmar region was swiftly catching up to Cambodia’s rates.

“Genetically determined artemisinin resistance in P. falciparum emerged along the Thailand-Myanmar border at least eight years ago and has since increased substantially,” said The Lancet study.

“At this rate of increase, resistance will reach rates reported in western Cambodia in two to six years.”

The research in the journal Science focused on what was making these parasites different, and found that a region on chromosome 13 of the parasite was strongly associated with slow clearance of infection.

They sequenced the genomes of 91 P. falciparum parasites from Cambodia and western Thailand and compared them to parasites from Laos, where resistance to the latest artemisinin-based drugs has not yet emerged.

They found seven genes that may be responsible for making the parasite resistant to drugs, and which may explain up to 35 percent of the growing resistance in southeast Asia.

“We have now seen the emergence of malaria resistant to our best drugs, and these resistant parasites are not confined to western Cambodia,” said leader of the study Francois Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit that studies and treats malaria in the Thai-Myanmar region.

“This is very worrying indeed and suggests that we are in a race against time to control malaria in these regions before drug resistance worsens and develops and spreads further.”

The two studies were funded by the Wellcome Trust and the US National Institutes of Health, and included scientists from Mahidol University, Bangkok; the Centre for Tropical Medicine at Britain’s Oxford University; and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in the United States.

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/06/2012 10:29 AM

In the Eye of the Storm: Israel Wary of Changes in the Arab World

By Juliane von Mittelstaedt

For decades, Israel had been hoping for change in the Arab world. Yet now that the region is in upheaval, its not just Israeli citizens who are concerned. The government has shown a preference for walling itself in rather than exploring new opportunities.

There is now a fence between Lieutenant Colonel Yoav Tilan and Egypt, and Tilan is clearly pleased about it. The fence is five meters (16 feet) tall and topped with shiny, sharp spikes. For good measure, the fence is flanked by three rows of barbed wire and an antitank ditch. From Israel's perspective, there is a good reason for the precautions. Egypt is now a perceived enemy. Seven months ago, killers crossed the border from Egypt and attacked busses and cars, killing eight Israelis.

"The border is hot," says Tilan, noting that it is now Israel's most dangerous. Border incidents, including gunfire and attempts to demolish the fence, have become an almost daily occurrence. Israeli authorities have also found explosives on several occasions.

Until recently, Tilan's job wasn't exactly a career-making position. Aside from drug smuggling, the area was so quiet that mostly reservists were sent there. In some places, the border wasn't even properly secured, consisting only of a rusty barbed-wire fence, often buried under sand and patrolled by Bedouins trained to read tracks in the desert. It was a tedious job, but revealed that illegal border crossings were common, including transgressions by off-road vehicles.

Indeed, Tilan's unit used to spend most of its time scooping up refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, more than 50,000 with a few years. The refugees were the motivation behind building the fence in the first place. But then came the revolution in Egypt, and explosions targeted the gas pipeline to Israel that runs through the Sinai Peninsula a total of 13 times. And then, on Aug. 18, 2011, came the attack. After that, the government sent in elite troops, special police units, a reconnaissance brigade and armored vehicles. It also sped up construction of the fence.

Cutting the Cord

Israel has been reacting in recent months the way it so often does when threatened: by walling itself in. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank disappeared behind security walls some time ago. There are high fences along the country's other borders, as well as land mines, but now it wants to improve border security even further by building a high-tech system like the one on the border with Egypt.

The Jewish state has tried to integrate itself into the Middle East for decades. Now it is trying to cut the cord between itself and the surrounding region, blocking out the changes in its neighborhood.

A year after the beginning of the Arab rebellions, it has become a story of mistrust, fear and apathy. Politicians like President Shimon Peres had long dreamed of a "new Middle East," a zone of democracy and freedom. But now that a new Middle East is in fact taking shape, the majority of Israelis and their government are not welcoming it. Although they want democratic neighbors, they are afraid of the democratization process, especially its uncertainties, as well as the instability and loss of control. No one knows yet what the new Middle East will look like, but the government has already decided that it is better to curl up into a ball than explore its options.

Israel's caution is understandable. Turmoil in the region has often embroiled the country in wars. Three times since the beginning of the recent uprisings, Arabs have tried to storm the Israeli border from Lebanon and Syria, most recently last week. But precisely for this reason, it is astonishing to see how little initiative the country is taking to achieve lasting peace in the region, even as it pulls out all the stops to ward off the more abstract threat of a possible Iranian nuclear bomb. In fact, if Israel truly intends to attack Iran, it will be all the more important for it to emerge from its isolation.

Israel sees itself as a "villa in the jungle," as Israeli politicians say, a vulnerable island of civilization surrounded by Islamists, as if Israel were not the most politically influential and militarily powerful force in the region. It's telling that in Israel the Arab Spring is merely referred to as the "Islamic Winter." Israelis like to point out that Gaza is an illustration of what happens when Islamists come into power, even though it hardly qualifies as an example.

'Moving Backward, Not Forward'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quick to disabuse anyone who believes that the uprisings could also have positive consequences. The Arab rebellion is developing into an "Islamic, anti-western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, undemocratic wave," the premier said in November. According to Netanyahu, the Arab world is "moving not forward, but backward," and anyone who believes Arabs and democracy are compatible is naïve.

Have the politicians' scare tactics worked? Or is Netanyahu merely expressing what his people think? In surveys, half of Israelis say that the uprisings would have a negative impact on their country. Shortly before Egyptian despot Hosni Mubarak was toppled, two-thirds of Israelis thought that this would be bad for their country. And now, as even children are being murdered in Syria, more than one in four Israelis is still convinced that bringing down the person responsible for the massacres, Syrian President Bashar Assad, would not be a good thing.

"If there is one lesson we have learned from the uprisings, it is that we must be strong," says a government advisor who prefers not to be named. Stability, security and strength -- that is Netanyahu's mantra. For him, the Arab revolutions mean no concessions, because Israel's policy, as he says, cannot be "based on illusions." One of these illusions is that peace is possible.

But what could Israel's relationship with the Arab world look like in the future? Three Israelis who are closer to the Arab world than most people in Israel explain their views of what the future could hold. The first is Lieutenant Colonel Tilan, the border patrol officer. The other two are Yitzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to Egypt until recently, and Lior Ben-Dor, the Foreign Ministry's Arabic media spokesman. Tilan defends Israel, Levanon represents it and Ben-Dor campaigns on its behalf.

Twice as High

At the border in the south, Tilan watches as welders reinforce the fence. The five-meter fence here is no longer high enough so they are now making it twice as high, hoping that it will prevent people from firing across it from the other side. The workers complete 400 meters (1,312 feet) a day, and the entire 240 kilometers (150 miles) are expected to be finished by the end of the year.

"Terrorists will still find ways to penetrate into Israel, by digging tunnels, attacking the fence or coming by sea," says the lieutenant colonel. According to Tilan, several groups in the Sinai Peninsula are currently preparing attacks. "Our cooperation with the Egyptians is seasonal. It depends on them how much resistance they..." -- Tilan corrects himself: "…how they want to govern the Sinai." The suspicions run deep, despite the fact that Israeli and Egyptian officials meet regularly, sometimes at the border crossing and sometimes at the fence, remaining on their respective sides -- a cautious rapprochement.

The new isolation is more evident in southern Israel than anywhere else. In Eilat on the Red Sea, the hotels are lined up along the shore, hemmed in by the Jordanian port city of Aqaba to the East and the Egyptian town of Taba to the West. In the past, Israelis ventured in both directions, but since the uprisings they have chosen to remain in Eilat, a 10-kilometer strip of land between the two borders.

Egypt, Jordan and also Turkey were long Israel's most important allies in the region. But this diplomatic network is dissolving, and new alliances with Greece, Cyprus and South Sudan have done little to help so far. By no means does the fault lie entirely with Israel, but it has also done little to improve relations. It chose not to reconcile with Turkey, and it has refused to accommodate the Palestinians at all.

Warnings against Passivity and Pessimism
In December Levanon, 67, was one of the last Israelis in Cairo, where he attended a farewell event at which the Egyptian intelligence chief gave him a model of a Pharaonic chariot. Levanon, Israel's ambassador to Egypt for more than a year, is a slim, white-haired man who can tell jokes in Arabic that even Egyptians find funny.

Levanon was in Cairo on the day in September when an agitated mob stormed the Israeli Embassy there. He was sitting in his apartment, watching the events unfold on television. He saw that policemen were standing in front of the embassy, but that they did not stop people from breaking down the walls around the building with hammers. Levanon called everyone he knew, including diplomats, intelligence officials and employees at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. In the end, an Egyptian special-forces unit rescued the Israeli guards. Then the ambassador and his staff were flown out of the country.

"It made me sad and furious, not so much at these people but at the Mubarak regime," says Levanon. "It's a consequence of a policy that allowed the hatred to grow for decades." Mubarak was a reliable partner, on the one hand, says Levanon. On the other hand, he allowed his newspapers to agitate against Israel, creating a release valve for the anger of the poor.

Levanon's successor lives in a hotel and travels home on weekends. The entire contents of the embassy were just flown to Tel Aviv on two cargo planes. Will there ever be a real embassy again? The new wind that is blowing from Egypt isn't exactly reassuring, says Levanon. Only a few weeks ago, a committee in the Egyptian parliament declared Israel to be Egypt's "Public Enemy Number One," and recommended expelling the Israeli ambassador and terminating natural gas exports to Israel. At the same time, the ruling military council just appointed a new ambassador to Tel Aviv and brokered a cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In doing so, the council has made it clear that it has not changed its position.

'Little to Do with Us'

"What is happening in the Arab countries has little to do with us," says Levanon. Israel, he adds, has to give them time and, in the meantime, establish contact with all sides. It was this line of thinking that prompted Levanon to recommend talking to the Muslim Brotherhood shortly after Mubarak was ousted. "But it was turned down." Levanon believes that it could be too late for that now, while officials at the Israeli Foreign Ministry feel that it's still too early.

Israel is also restrained on the issue of Syria, and no Israeli politician has publicly called for Assad's resignation. Israel doesn't want to harm the opposition with public statements, says an advisor to the government. But many Arabs will likely interpret this as tacit support for the Assad regime.

It took a year before the Israeli foreign minister said, in early March: "The Jewish nation cannot sit by and do nothing while citizens of our neighboring country are being slaughtered." Although Israel could not intervene, he added, "it's our moral obligation to at least extend humanitarian aid and to call upon the world to stop the massacres."

Ironically, it is precisely those who were once responsible for the nation's security who are now warning against passivity and pessimism. "Obviously Israel is in the eye of the storm, but it behaves as if it were not involved in the events," writes Efraim Halevi, the former head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. Halevi insists that the uprising in Syria is an invaluable boon for Israel, because it has shattered the axis joining Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah. The latter have just questioned their support for Iran in the event of an Israeli attack. And if the Syrian aid for Hezbollah were to dry up, perhaps even Lebanon could look forward to a second Cedar Revolution.

Addressing the Arabs on Facebook

Others, like former intelligence chiefs Ami Ayalon and Meïr Dagan, advocate negotiations with the Palestinians to counter Israel's growing isolation, but the government is doing nothing -- at a time when every bit of progress would help preserve the peace with Egypt and strengthen the king in Jordan. Jordan is still quiet, but the virus of the Arab rebellion is already in the country. King Abdullah II, hoping to placate his people, has recently made public remarks critical of Israel. He hasn't sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv in two years, while the Israeli Embassy in Amman is under tighter security than many a central bank. When two Israeli psychiatrists gave a lecture in Amman recently, hundreds of students protested in front of the university. Security forces had to take the two Israelis out a back door.

Such incidents illustrate why Israel feels so threatened. On the other hand, the country has done little to address the people in neighboring countries directly, it was enough to negotiate with their rulers. The government ought to approach the Arabs now, and yet not a single Israel politician has addressed the demonstrators in Cairo or Tunis in a speech. Nevertheless, the country is cautiously putting out its feelers via the Internet.

Lior Ben-Dor, 43, is linked to exactly 103,199 Arabs, who have subscribed to the Foreign Ministry's Facebook page. The page, called "Israel Speaks Arabic," was created a year ago.

Ben-Dor, the Foreign Ministry's Arabic media spokesman, is Israel's face on Al-Jazeera. But Ben-Dor has also become active on the Internet, where he tries to tear down the walls Israel is building. He uses chats to oppose anti-Israeli propaganda, but his is only a quiet voice in a noisy environment. "After all, we don't know which of these people might become important. Or perhaps someone will just talk to his friends about Israel and stick up for us." Even Ben-Dor knows that this is little more than a vague hope.

'Little Has Changed'

He has just posted a video featuring the Israeli singer Dudu Aharon, and a dialogue is unfolding beneath the video. Between comments like "One day we'll exterminate you" and "Go to hell," there are also those who write: "Great singer." Ben-Dor's staff has weeded out 10 of 17 comments, which is about normal.

They prefer to post music videos or images of the beach in Tel Aviv. The message is simple: Israel is a harmless country where life is good. "Whenever someone indicates that he is open to our arguments, I write to him," says Ben-Dor. Sometimes he spends hours in a single chat, and he recently had a long discussion with an Egyptian journalist.

While Ben-Dor is chatting, a pencil drawing of Jordan's King Hussein is looking over his shoulder. He has drawn them all: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. A few months ago, he began posting his drawings on Facebook. The drawing of Assad was especially popular, partly because of the caption Ben-Dor had written next to it in Arabic: "I love my people to death."

Some 11,401 people clicked on the Assad drawing, 141 commented and 98 "liked" it. One user wrote: "Dear Israel, largest democracy in the Middle East, who will replace Assad when he is gone?" Another wrote: "Assad is a coward. He should get out." These are the kinds of responses Ben-Dor likes. "Many Arabs have never spoken with Israelis, and for many a chat with me is the first time." They have become more curious, says Ben-Dor, now that their rulers are gone, and they are asking new questions.

There are positive signs at the individual level, says the diplomat. "But by and large little has changed. They don't hate us any less than before. But not any more than before, either."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[Rad]

SPIEGEL ONLINE
04/06/2012 01:21 PM

Chasing a Better Life: Roma Immigrants Find 'Paradise' in Troubled Berlin District

By Özlem Gezer

The Berlin district of Neukölln is considered one of Germany's poorest and most troubled neighborhoods. But for hundreds of residents of a small village in Romania, it has become a welcome new home, a source of generous state benefits and a symbol of hope for those left behind.

The Pentecostal church in the town of Fântânele, at the end of a long village street, is a bleak-looking brick building. Plastic roses hang on the walls inside, and a stone oven keeps the roughly 60 people crowded together on the church benches warm.

The oldest person in Fântânele delivers the sermon, and then the worshippers pray together for their families living far away in Berlin's Neukölln district -- and for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A man in a fur hat blows kisses and says, "Angela, you are the mother of Europe. We love you." "God bless Angela," he adds, because she is accepting the Roma and not "throwing them out," like French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

After the service, schoolchildren run through the streets greeting each other in German, shouting "tschüss" ("bye") and "Neukölln." They can hardly wait to get there in person.

In Germany, Neukölln is considered one of the country's poorest neighborhoods. But, in Fântânele, a Roma village 35 kilometers (22 miles) northwest of Bucharest, they call it paradise.

On another street corner, a woman in a bathrobe is petting her pigs. One of her sons was just in Berlin, where he stayed in an apartment building on Harzer Street. Many of their friends already live in the same building. The reports from paradise give them hope, and now the extended family is saving money for the move. They want to go to Neukölln along with their 10 children and possibly the grandfather. "Hopefully for good," the woman says.

Indeed, this village is in transit. About 500 people from Fântânele already live on Harzer Street, in Neukölln, while another 200 are scattered around in other parts of Berlin. A quarter of the village's residents have already succumbed to the siren call, and many more hope to follow. They want to take advantage of the promise of prosperity that came to their country when it joined the European Union, a promise of a better life for them and their children.

The miniature mass migration from Fântânele to Neukölln is a move to the German social welfare state, a world where child-care allowances and the Hartz IV benefits for the long-term unemployed are already bring in more money than pig farming in rural Romania. Since their country joined the EU in 2007, the number of Romanians living in Germany has almost doubled, to 127,000.

The Roots of an Exodus

The great trek of the hopeful began with Volker P., a recipient of Hartz IV benefits who is now 35. He moved to Berlin from a small village in the eastern German state of Saxony in the late 1990s. He worked as a bricklayer and tried to rake in his share of the wealth promised by the new, reunified Germany. He slaved away on several construction sites, working for various companies, but either the wages were poor or the employers cheated their workers out of their earnings. Frustrated and disillusioned, he spent a lot of time in a kebab shop in Neukölln, where he got to know a young man from Romania.

His new friend invited him to his hometown, Fântânele. In the village, which lacks sanitation and street lights, Volker met Roma who were sedentary rather than wanderers as well as devout Christians who had been members of a Pentecostal congregation for generations and lived according to strict rules: no begging, no stealing, no cursing and no spitting. They also don't believe in birth control. Some families have 10 children, and some have even more.

Volker liked the people in Fântânele -- especially his friend's sister. "It was love at first sight," he says. He married the young woman and took her back to Berlin with him.

When Romania became a member of the EU, Volker's family also grew. Marian, his oldest brother-in-law, came to Berlin first, followed by Volker's in-laws. Then came seven of his wife's other siblings and their children, followed in turn by cousins, neighbors, friends and acquaintances.

They were leaving behind an old village of musicians whose men used to travel around the country in bands, earning a living by playing at weddings. Then they sold their pigs and began dealing in used cars. Nowadays, most residents are unemployed.

Amazed by Generous Social Benefits

Hope returned to Fântânele when Romania joined the EU. With the freedom to travel came the freedom to get away.

Their new life began in a complicated world, one that was seductive and yet dismissive of Romanian citizens. It was difficult to obtain a work permit in this world, and the new arrivals were expected to leave again after three months.

But Volker, who was living with his wife in Berlin on social benefits, had learned a few things about the German social welfare state. He got some advice from a well-meaning social worker on how to help his new relatives by marriage. "She explained the little back doors to me," he says.

One of these back doors is the right of all EU citizens to work as a self-employed person in any member country. Volker registered his relatives as tradespeople, specifically as scrap dealers, which entitled them to a permanent residence permit.

As could probably be expected, their businesses didn't go well, and they didn't make enough money to support themselves. In Germany, such cases are subject to the parts of the Social Code dealing with statutory unemployment insurance and benefits that guarantee low-income self-employed people the right to receive basic benefits from the state.

The Roma were astonished. They had never heard of such acts of welfare in Fântânele. Many of them now live on support payments from the local job center as well as on child-care benefits, which are more than 20 times higher in Germany than they are in Romania. They don't know that a social welfare state comes up against its limits when there are too many people using its benefits. They haven't understood the German principle, or they just don't want to understand it.

Losing Control

News of the German social welfare laws reached Fântânele, prompting more and more families to make the long trip to Berlin. Volker, their guide through the German social welfare state, became very busy. While searching for accommodations, he eventually stumbled upon the building on Harzer Street. After two major fires, most of its apartments were empty.

Volker and the building's owner quickly figured out that they could do business together. The landlord had apartments with little appeal to the general market, while Volker could supply tenants with few demands. Before long, 90 percent of the apartments had been rented out to Roma. As a result, the Berlin-based satellite of Fântânele, a separate little world in the overwhelmingly immigrant district of Neukölln, came into being in a 7,500-square-meter (81,000-square-foot) apartment building. And, as anyone could have predicted, it soon developed into a new social "hotspot" that politicians would only notice and deplore once it was too late to fix it.

Indeed, the immigrants lived on Harzer Street as if they had never left their Romanian village. They beat their carpets in the courtyard, walked across the street in their bathrobes and kept their distance from their German neighbors. Some were sleeping on mattresses in the basement, and garbage began to pile up in the courtyard because no one knew what to do with it. The local press in Berlin soon dubbed Harzer Street the home of the "garbage children of Neukölln."

Volker had completed a course that allowed him to identify himself to authorities as an "integration guide." In reality, though, he had already lost control. "It was as if someone had pulled the plug from the bathtub," he says, describing the stampede of immigrants from Fântânele. He felt overwhelmed and withdrew from his role as an informal liaison for and adviser to the Roma on Harzer Street. Now, they were now left to their own devices.

The Landlord as Social Worker

But the Romanians enjoyed a second stroke of good luck. In August 2011, a building management company based in the western city of Aachen bought their apartment building in Neukölln. The company is owned by the Catholic Church and values social commitment. The project manager the new owners sent to Berlin was Benjamin Marx, a man who exudes both goodwill and authority in equal measure. The Roma treat him as their new village leader.

Marx, 57, is wearing a white scarf, polished leather shoes and Hugo Boss cologne. The Romanians practically stand at attention when he walks down Harzer Street. Marx had 750 cubic meters of garbage removed from the courtyard and the windows and heating systems repaired, and he had an exterminator come to take care of the rat problem. All residents received packages of tangerines and gift bags for Christmas. "If the city doesn't do any proper integration work, we have to step in," Marx says.

He and his colleagues do this work mainly during tenant office hours, when women in bathrobes and men sit in the waiting room outside the management company's office. Some say they haven't been able to sleep for days after mistaking the marketing materials from a telephone provider for deportation papers from the German authorities. Others have 10 children and have only registered five because they don't want to be too brazen and fear that they will be deported if they collect too much in child-care subsidies.

One of the tenants, 38-year-old Avram S., pulls out a hospital bill. His wife gave birth to twins in a local hospital. But his health-insurance company went out of business, and now he's afraid because he doesn't know how he'll pay the €3,000 bill. He doesn't speak any German.

Model Project, Mixed Blessings
A few months ago, the Neukölln district released a "Roma Status Report." In it, the Pentecostal community on Harzer Street is described as a commendable exception to an otherwise troubled community. According to the report, the Roma on Harzer Street are among the families "who register with the authorities, want a better education for their children and want to succeed here."

Their efforts are also evident during the weekly German lesson. Every Wednesday, the men attend the voluntary lessons and write in pink notebooks they have brought along from their village. "I want work," the teacher dictates. "I am hungry." "I am homesick for Fântânele." Benjamin Marx sits in the corner and watches. Sometimes a Romanian bursts into the classroom and apologizes for being late, saying "Skuze" and bowing in front of him. When Marx isn't there, the men keep an attendance list. They want their newly appointed village leader to see that they were there. They call him "patron."

Marx is proud of his Roma. He is having a theater room built in the basement, and he would like to transform the Arab café in the building next door into an artists' café. He also plans to offer sewing lessons for the women.

Marx has even brought Berlin's new cardinal, Rainer Maria Woelki, to Harzer Street, he attends round-table meetings in the district, and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit is scheduled to visit the Roma project soon.

The media will probably be there, as well, and big speeches will be made about the integration of immigrants. But the Pentecostal Roma are having trouble adapting to the permissive customs of the West. This becomes apparent when the women from Fântânele meet at the community center once a week. They sit in a circle and talk about their lives. They are afraid of entrusting their children to German child-care workers with facial piercings. They wonder why a half-naked, tattooed soccer star poses for underwear ads, and they look away when they walk past the large David Beckham posters.

They also don't understand a government that gives away money without asking for anything in return. "This money is a blessing," says one mother. "Every morning, when I open my eyes, I think to myself that today it'll stop coming. At some point, it will stop."

Another woman talks about the past. She misses her village, where there were cherry trees and pigs in the courtyard, and she would like to have a garden again in which she could plant onions. Now that she, her husband and their children live in a tiny apartment, she thinks longingly of her old house. "But you can't eat a house," she says.

Still Dreaming Back Home

Today, three years after the exodus began, Fântânele feels like a doomed town. The reports from Berlin, from the paradise in Germania, are the stuff of residents' dreams.

The school was closed for several weeks in the winter, when the heating system broke down in the pink concrete building. About 100 children left the village school last year alone, and many of them now attend the Hans Fallada School on Harzer Street. "We can't stop them," says a teacher. "They have no future here in the village."

The next children whose future could very well lie in Berlin's Neukölln district are the son and two daughters of Leonard Cibilian. The family is one of the poorest in Fântânele. Its five members live in a 15-square-meter (150-square-foot) room, sleeping on worn mattresses instead of beds, and the toilet is a hole in the ground outside with a roof over it. The Cibilians earn a living by making aluminum pans and, for some time now, they have been saving as much as they can for the move to Berlin. "I also want my own kitchen. And a bathroom. Bring me to Berlin!" Cibilian's wife says.

Cibilian was in Berlin once before, in the mid-1990s, as an asylum seeker. He speaks German and is familiar with the pop and sports culture of that time. He also believes he'll be in Berlin within a month.

He wants his children to visit the zoo, splash around in a German swimming pool and go on school trips. He also wants them to attend a university after graduation. "Why not Oxford or Cambridge," Cibilian says, "just like other Europeans."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan