German newspapers have poured scorn on Thilo Sarrazin, the Bundesbank board member who has published a book claiming Muslim immigrants are undermining German society. His words are racist and divided, say some editorials. Others say he is voicing important points, albeit in the wrong tone.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined a chorus of criticism of Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin for claiming in a book released on Mondaythat Germany is in decline because of its Muslim immigrants. Merkel said in a television interview on Sunday that Sarrazin’s choice of words in the integration debate was “completely unacceptable.”

“He is making a discussion of these issues much more difficult,” Merkel told the German public television station ARD. “The words being used here divide society.”

Sarrazin, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, provoked further criticism at the weekend by saying in a newspaper interview that “all Jews share a certain gene.”

Sarrazin, a former minister of finance for the city-state of Berlin, has repeatedly caused controversy by criticising Turks and Arabs in Germany. The latest controversy has led to renewed calls for him to be sacked from his Bundesbank job and evicted from his party.

In his book, Sarrazin argues that Muslims undermine German society and that young Muslim men are aggressive due to sexual frustration.

Some media commentators call Sarrazin’s comments racist, divisive and misguided and one even draws parallels between it and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” But others direct their criticsm more at his choice of words, and voice qualified agreement with the points he makes.

Read more here.

Good news for jobseekers who like to brag about their drinking exploits on Facebook: A new law in Germany will stop bosses from checking out potential hires on social networking sites. They will, however, still be allowed to google applicants.

Lying about qualifications. Alcohol and drug use. Racist comments. These are just some of the reasons why potential bosses reject job applicants after looking at their Facebook profiles.

According to a 2009 survey commissioned by the website CareerBuilder, some 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. And some 35 percent of those employers had rejected candidates based on what they found there, such as inappropriate photos, insulting comments about previous employers or boasts about their drug use.

But those Facebook users hoping to apply for a job in Germany should pause for a moment before they hit the “deactivate account” button. The government has drafted a new law which will prevent employers from looking at a job applicant’s pages on social networking sites during the hiring process.

According to reports in the Monday editions of the Die Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung newspapers, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has drafted a new law on data privacy for employees which will radically restrict the information bosses can legally collect. The draft law, which is the result of months of negotiations between the different parties in Germany’s coalition government, is set to be approved by the German cabinet on Wednesday, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Although the new law will reportedly prevent potential bosses from checking out a candidate’s Facebook page, it will allow them to look at sites that are expressly intended to help people sell themselves to future employers, such as the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn. Information about the candidate that is generally available on the Internet is also fair game. In other words, employers are allowed to google potential hires. Companies may not be allowed to use information if it is too old or if the candidate has no control over it, however.

The new law is partially a reaction to a number of recent scandals in Germany involving management spying on staff. In 2008, it was revealed that the discount retail chain Lidl had spied on employees in the toilet and had collected information on their private lives. National railway Deutsche Bahn and telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom were also involved in cases relating to surveillance of workers.

Online data privacy is increasingly becoming a hot-button issue in Germany. The government is currently also working on legislation to deal with issues relating to Google’s Street View service, which is highly controversial in the country because of concerns it could violate individuals’ privacy.

Read more here.

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A group of neuroscientists, as reported in a New York Times article, went on a vacation in Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Utah, in order to see for themselves if, and possibly how, Nature might affect their brains, long accustomed (if not addicted) to electronic stimulation via cell phones, emails, computers, etc.

They already know (what most don’t) that too much stimulation has a negative affect on the brain. Dr. Strayer of the University of Utah says that “too much digital stimulation can take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.’” Another scientist who has studied teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones argues that “heavy technology use can inhibit deep thinking and cause anxiety.” They know, further, that “(b)ehavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask.” And all are mindful of a seminal Univ. of Michigan study “that showed people can learn better after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street.” Hence their trip to Glen Canyon and away from the city and the university with all its pervasive electronic stimulation. They want to see for themselves what kind of power Nature possesses in counteracting our modern-day over-stimulated lives.

After three days in the wilderness a state of relaxation called “third-day syndrome” sets in, in which time “slows,” one is more in tune with nature, has more energy, including mental energy, and with clearer thoughts as a result.

Now let me share my experiences, which mirror what these neuroscientists have discovered on their trip “back to nature.”

For three years, from 4^th through 6^th grade, our family moved to a farm outside of Cincinnati, where my father worked. He chose to drive to work, over an hour each way (when doing so was uncommon) in order to enjoy the benefits of living close to nature. For us it wasn’t a great adjustment, however, since my parents’ best friends already lived on a farm and growing up we spent many weekends, and many holidays, visiting them. After class in my rural school was over, and after a three-mile walk home, I spent before-supper and after-supper time roaming in our fields, or riding our horses, or exploring our little streams and banks, or swimming in, or ice-skating on, our ponds, or playing all sorts of outdoor games with my sisters and our friends. Life on our farm truly was never boring: and “nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”

When we moved back to Cincinnati, I lost part of myself which, all these years later, I still mourn, so wonderful was that experience. A decade later, during spring break from college, a friend and I went on a 10-day canoeing trip on a big lake in Canada. We paddled all day, slept on little islands in the lake at night, and ate (inter alia) fresh sturgeon with eggs, which was indescribably delicious. We brought no electronics with us. We lovingly took in nature and her beauty, talked, read, thought, contemplated, drank from the lake (so pure and utterly delicious and refreshing was its water), admired the sparkling stars at night, and felt a one-ness with nature which was almost a mystical experience. When our trip was over and we returned to our car, by reflex I turned on the radio—and such a jarring, unnatural, unwelcome “noise” assaulted our ears that I had to turn it off immediately. We then drove the long way home (10 hours) without music. Years later, when I was studying German in Freiburg, Germany, I would hike in the Schwarzwald (The Black Forest) every day after class, through all seasons, fall through summer, for a minimum of three hours. It was then, and has remained for me since, one of life’s most wonderful experiences. However harried I may have been after class, or however lonely for my family and friends, I was always renewed after my nature-hike, and could then return, refreshed, to Freiburg and to class.

I mention these personal experiences because the neuroscientists’ surprise at being “re-made” in nature is only a surprise to those who have never experienced her beauty and grace before. One need only read (eg) poems of Keats or Wordsworth or Coleridge to find out how much they themselves were restored by nature and healed of the negatives effects of living too long “in (a) city pent.” But the same restorative powers of nature I feel sure apply to electronic stimulation/addiction too: Nature brings us back to our real selves, and provides a healing which cannot otherwise be had.

In my English classes in Korea, an ultra-wired country with addiction to technology being a real problem among young people, I daily see the negative effects of the omnipresence of cell-phones and texting, and of hours daily spent playing computer games after (or before) school and how this saps the minds of so many of my students, leaving them distracted and unable to think, making learning for them almost impossible—which harmful effects, by the way, are clear to all of us teachers. A return to nature would certainly be one way to restore, insofar as possible, a sense of normality to these students’ lives. But one doesn’t need to be a neuroscientist to discover this. Just take a walk out into nature yourself sometime, sans cell, laptop, iPod, etc, and Mother Nature will awaken depths long-forgotten and unused. And life will have restored to it much of its lost beauty and grace—and the joie de vivre which seems to be absent among so many young people today.

“To one who has been long in city pent,

‘Tis very sweet too look into the fair

And open face of heaven,–to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart’s content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel,–an eye

Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

–John Keats, To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent

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Germany’s super-rich have rejected an invitation by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to join their ‘Giving Pledge’ to give away most of their fortune. The pledge has been criticized in Germany, with millionaires saying donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by the state.

Last week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates attempted to convince billionaires around the world to agree to give away half their money to charity. But in Germany, the “Giving Pledge,” backed by 40 of the world’s wealthiest people, including Gates and Warren Buffet, has met with skepticism, SPIEGEL has learned.

“For most people that is too ostentatious,” said the asset manager of one of the billionaires contacted by Gates, adding that many of the of the people contacted had already transferred larger proportions of their assets than the Americans to charitable foundations.

Dietmar Hopp, the co-founder of the SAP business software company, has transferred some €2.9 billion to a foundation. Klaus Tschira, another founder of SAP, has handed more than half his wealth to a foundation.

Peter Krämer, a Hamburg-based shipping magnate and multimillionaire, has emerged as one of the strongest critics of the “Giving Pledge.” Krämer, who donated millions of euros in 2005 to “Schools for Africa,” a program operated by UNICEF, explained his opposition to the Gates initiative in a SPIEGEL interview.

Read the interview here.

In July, Italy’s foremost daily, Corriere della Sera, published a short Op-Ed by the distinguished contributor, Sergio Romano, whose reputation comes from his historical essays rather than from having been an ambassador. The title was strong: “The rebirth of a great country. Ethical values of the Germans”. Romano emphasized that in 1870 the immense victory of Prussia in just two great battles of a war with France that Berlin exploited but did not start, launched a well-deserved primacy of Germany in Europe. The Reich which was born in the German space out of many kingdoms and principalities soon asserted itself as the Continent’s most important country, also its moral leader.

Italy for one took Germany as her model in several fields- industrial development, science, socio-political developments. Hitler and WW2, writes Romano, devastated the noble profile of that nation, “so for many years it was difficult to tell Italians about the vast patrimony of cultural excellence, industriousness, economic dynamism, scientific intelligence, philosophical depth, artistic and literary creativity, which Germany accumulated in less than two centuries. An extraordinary Renaissance”. This was so because the whole history of the German nation was marked by the specifically German virtues of seriousness, loyalty, and ethical strength.

Of course, Sergio Romano does not dodge the tragic questions raised by twelve years of Adolf Hitler -he rather underlines that the very moral and spiritual excellence of the national character saved Germany from her crimes, restoring her sanity.

One remark might be added, however: the qualities which make the endowment of the German race are not necessarily the positive ones. Germany is great because of her sins, too. Germans, while possessing the best of inheritances, also possess the worst ones. Luther’s rebellion to the papacy was the triumph of truth over expediency, the heroism of faith against evil. But Martin Luther was incapable of compassion when the German peasants tried to free themselves from subservience to their feudal masters.

The events of Hitler’s last years make it too clear that in specified conditions Germans could behave diabolically. Satan made deep inroads into the German soul. Germans have sinned more than other races, possibly because their minds and hearts were deeper. J.S.Bach concentrated more on higher religious thought in his music than all composers lumped together. Nietzsche, the prophet of new Gods, the last disciple of Dionysus, derided Christ but Tolstoj, the Christian socialist, described Nietzsche as his teacher. Schopenhauer too, even if the latter in his will donated a sum to the German soldiers who had put down the revolution in Berlin.

Germans nearer to our feelings taught us to penetrate the tragedies of modernity. Wrote Alfred Doeblin, born in Stettin 1878: “we must help God”. R.M.Rilke invoked the garden “wo Gott beginnt” (where God begins). Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the noble philosopher and patriot, claimed in 1808 that his people were “the interpreters of the world spirit, the only uncorrupted one”. For Thomas Carlyle, the English historian of the heroes, “pious Germany rose as Queen of Europe”.

Some of the virtues that Sergio Romano assigns to the Germans are shared by other nations. Swedes, for example, are serious, laborious, well organized: but lacking the greatness and the evil of Germans, they are  rather disregarded by history of man. In a way it might be said that Germans would be a humbler stock, if they had not generated mythical figures as opposed as Parsifal and Hitler, Wagner and Rilke.

There was a time when the intellectuals of France, Germany’s hereditary enemy, were deeply impressed, even fascinated, by the glory of the German thought. M.me de Stael had called Germany ‘the heart of Europe’. Notwithstanding the diplomatic crisis of 1840, the French philosopher and minister Victor Cousin kept praising everything spiritual of Goethe’s fatherland. For a period Ernest Renan believed that the real goal of his life had to be working to unite spiritually France and Germany. For Montesquieu  the spirit of freedom was born in the forests where the Germans, ‘our fathers’, lived in the distant past. Everything changed in France after 1870, when Germany triumphed. The French nationalism exploded, two world wars followed.

Nobody will ever be able to belittle the rational component of the German mind. But its irrational component is imposing. Romanticism, one of the greatest phases in the Western civilization, began in Heidelberg when Achim von Arnim launched the small review “Troest Einsamkeit”, “a journal for anchorites”.  Was a great reactionary thinker of France, Charles Maurras, wrong when he concluded “Nationalsocialism is the Islam of the North?

In conclusion, every single word that Sergio Romano wrote on Germany is right. In a very short article he could not possibly elaborate more. But the credits he assigns to such a nation are the bland, sedate ones. The German heritage is neither bland nor overly reasonable. Thomas Mann, before becoming in WW2  a propagandist of the Allied, plutodemocratic crusade, had meditated on the torment and tragedy of the German nature. He argued: “He who would like to transform Germany into a middle-class democracy, would deprive her of the best she is. Germany means abyss”.

According to a press release from The Institute of National Statistics, on January 1, 2010, the Romanian population was recorded as 21,462,000 inhabitants. The male population is represented by 48.7 percent and the female population is represented by 51.3 percent. Romania is the seventh country in the European Union on the largest population chart. It follows Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Poland.

The young population (0-15 years old) is about 15.2 percent, the adult population is 69.9 percent, and the seniors (65+) – 14.9 percent. By January 1, 2010, the average age of the Romanian population was about 39.6 years.

In the urban areas, there are over 11,819,000 dwellers, more than half of the Romania’s population (55.1 per cent). The cities with the largest population are: Bucharest (the capital) – 1,944,500 inhabitants, Timyshoara – 311,400 inhabitants, Iashi – 308,700 inhabitants, and Cluj – 307,200 inhabitants.

The population of Romania is decreasing because of the migration process that has increased after Romania joined the European Union in 2007, giving Romanians the possibility to travel and work without restrictions. The labor migration is a serious problem in Romania, while millions of people went to Italy, Spain, Greece, and other EU countries to work.

Read the full post here.

Germany opens its business gateway into Central Asia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s presence at the Kazakh-German business forum in Astana on Sunday confirmed the European nation’s growing interest in the developing economy of Kazakhstan but also in that country’s immense energy resources. Merkel, in fact, noted that Kazakhstan was the fourth largest energy supplier in Germany.

“Germany can contribute a lot in Kazakhstan’s industrial modernization. Germany supports Kazakhstan’s intention to diversify economy and develop infrastructure as well as promote small and medium businesses”, Angela Merkel emphasized.

Kazakhstan and Germany have signed 34 agreements to the amount of 2 billion euros. First Vice Minister of Industry and New Technologies Albert Rau has made it public at Kazakh-German business forum in Astana today.

According to him, 700 enterprises with German capital operate in Kazakhstan presently. More than 300 businessmen from Kazakhstan and Germany took part in the forum.

Read more here.

Germany is the leading contributor to the European Union- and IMF-led fund to shore up the battered euro. An emergency provision in the agreement for the 750 billion euro rescue package, however, could see the country paying a lot more than the upper ceiling of 148 billion euros.

German taxpayers have already had to dig deep into their pockets to fund the bailout for nearly insolvent Greece and the triple-digit billion fund reserved to provide guarantees for euro zone member states if they run into trouble. Some members of the German government, though, are concerned that the tab for taxpayers could get even bigger.

Members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government fear that country’s contribution to the rescue of financially troubled euro zone member states could surge above the €148 billion ($183 billion) ceiling promised by Berlin.
Although the emergency fund agreement does reference the ceiling, it also has a provision for emergency situations that, in the worst case scenario, could see Germany’s participation go well beyond the amount originally pledged. The provision states that, in an emergency, if a nation is unable to contribute its share to the bailout package, it can call upon other contributing countries for assistance in providing its share. If the request is approved unanimously by the partners to the agreement, the struggling nation’s share can then be assigned to other countries. Under this scenario, there are no caps on the total amount.

Read more here.

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An anonymous “how to” of terrorism techniques is circulating in Germany’s far-left scene, much to the consternation of authorities. As well as tips on making bombs, the “Anarchist Cookbook”-knockoff reveals how to outfox the police, saw down power poles and stop trains.

Back in the 1970s, no self-respecting left-wing militant was without a copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a compendium of recipes for concocting home-made explosives and other strategies for taking on The Man. Now a newly penned manual of urban guerrilla warfare is causing concern among Germany’s security authorities.

According to sources in security circles, an 80-page pamphlet entitled “Prisma” (”prism”) has recently been circulating in the far-left scene. The anonymous publication includes tips for carrying out terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage, and includes instructions for constructing various kinds of bombs with time fuses and special grappling hooks which can be used to stop trains. The book also describes techniques for sawing down power poles and has several chapters devoted to investigative methods used by the police, describing in detail how urban guerrillas can cover their tracks and shake off tails.

Berlin public prosecutors have already launched an investigation into the pamphlet, which is circulating mainly in the far-left scene in Hamburg, Berlin and the state of Lower Saxony. German security agencies are concerned that the manual could further increase the — already high — propensity of young radicals to carry out violent attacks. The document encourages extremists to commit crimes “with a hitherto unknown level of meticulousness and professionalism,” says Hans-Werner Wargel, head of the Lower Saxony branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

Read more here.

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, Chancellor Angela Merkel must now find a replacement for German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in a huff on Monday. If she fails to organize a smooth succession, fresh questions will be raised about her own leadership.

Germany’s political establishment, shaken by the sudden resignation of President Horst Köhler on Monday, is rife with speculation about the possible impact on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as it emerged that she had warned him that quitting could plunge the country into a deep crisis.

Köhler, 67, who had started his second term last year in the largely ceremonial post, resigned in reaction to fierce criticism from the media and opposition politicians after he had linked German military deployments to the defense of the country’s economic interests in a radio interview last week.

Köhler gave Merkel only two hours’ notice before announcing his resignation and she said in her own Monday remarks that she had tried in vain to dissuade him. SPIEGEL ONLINE learned that she had warned him that resigning could trigger a crisis and shake the public’s faith in the presidency and in the institutions of state.

Köhler’s departure could not come at a worse time for Merkel, whose conservative Christian Democrats have slumped to 30 percent support, their lowest level in four years, according to a Forsa opinion poll published on Tuesday. The survey was conducted between May 25 and 28, before Köhler quit.

Read more here.

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