Post Tagged with: "Berlin"

A Southasian journalist discovers the limits of Berlin’s presumed enlightenment

My friend Hani Yousuf:

A few weeks ago I met a pleasant Austrian woman at a party in a bar in Prenzlauerberg, the formerly East Berlin area now home to the young, professional and cool. It was a weeknight, lights in the bar were violet and dim and conversation was possible. We were celebrating a friend’s journalism prize awarded by the German feminist magazine Emma.

My companion promised me Sachertorte – the famous Austrian chocolate cake – from her next trip to Vienna, and I instantly warmed up to her. This was before the fireworks began. When I mentioned I was from Pakistan, her reaction was the oft-expressed assumption that it must be very difficult to be a woman there. I have lived and worked in journalism in Berlin for a year and a half, and the experience has made me appreciate the way I am treated back home as a career woman. I told her as much – that I find that I am more respected back home. I was about to tell her that my mind is more appreciated and I am, of course for several reasons, taken more seriously there than in Germany. “Respect,” she said, cutting me off mid-sentence, “You call walking three steps behind a man respect?”

Here.

August 31, 2012 Read More

Pirates and European politics – Video

As you’ve probably heard, the Pirate Party got elected into the Berlin state parliament late last year. They got 8.9% of the votes, which gave them 15 seats. Last month in local elections in another state, Saarland, they got 7.4% of the votes, but more importantly, they got 25% of the first-time voters and about the same share from previous non-voters (see this post by Marian Wirth on Google+). Some people have been pretty dismissive of them. See this article by foreign policy wonk, Dr Ulrike Guérot, in which she compares them to the Occupy movement in the US (I am not even going to try to discuss how seriously misinformed and misleading that is). On the other hand, some say that the Pirates are going to democratise Europe. Well, let’s just say that I dont think that is even one of their main goals. The most important thing to know, as the founder of the first Pirate Party, the Piratpartiet, says in the video below, is that they grew out of a protest movement and they are just beginning to deepen their philosophy. The fact that they are making real inroads in Germany is a sign of that.

What about Africa? They talk a little about that during the last 10 minutes of the video.

Thanks to Menelic for sending me the link to the video.

April 14, 2012 Read More

Call for applications: Cultural Diplomacy

I just got this in the mail. If you have any questions, write to the email addresses in the body of the Call.

“Call for Applications”

(ICD Conferences, January – March 2012)

Dear Sir/ Madam,

On behalf of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, I am writing to bring to your attention the following major programs (outlined below) hosted by us in partnership with other leading organizations. The Programs will bring together governmental and diplomatic officials, civil society practitioners, private sector representatives, journalists, young professionals, students and scholars, and other interested stakeholders from across the world for a program of lectures, workshops, panel and group discussions and social and cultural activities featuring leading figures from the fields of politics, academia, civil society, media, and business.
The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy is currently accepting applications for the events outlined below, all of which will take place from January 2012 – March 2012. .

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The European African Alliance Conference 2012

Development Initiatives, Trade Relations and Interregional Cultural Exchange in the European African Alliance (Berlin, January 10th – 13th, 2012)
www.experience-africa.org

The “European African Alliance Conference 2012” is the first of several conferences relating to Africa. This conference will focus on the relationship between Europe and Africa in the context of development, trade, security and cultural exchange with the view to explore and evaluate Africa’s and Europe’s role in the field of Cultural Diplomacy.

Africa’s relationship with Europe and European Institutions has developed significantly over the last decade making the European African Alliance an interesting and relevant topic for discussion today. The program will consist of lectures, seminars, debates and panel discussions that will feature leading figures from international politics & diplomacy, academia, civil society, and the private sector.

This conference will focus on and analyze economic issues such as migration and employment, political issues such as the use and affect of institutions, democracy and international relations and security and trade issues.

To Apply please visit:
http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/experienceafrica/index.php?en_eaac-2012_application-form

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Cultural Diplomacy in Africa: A Forum for Young Leaders

Development Initiatives, Trade Relations and Interregional Cultural Exchange in the European African Alliance (Weeklong Seminar, Berlin, January 9th – 15th, 2012)
www.icd-africa.org

**Participants of the forthcoming CDA weeklong seminar will take part in the International Conference “The European African Alliance Conference 2012 (Berlin, January 10th – 13th, 2012)

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The International Conference on the African Union & Cultural Diplomacy

Cultural Diplomacy as a Vehicle of Global Governance: The Role of Cultural Diplomacy and Soft Power in the Future of the African Union (London, February 7th-10th, 2012)

The African Union and Cultural Diplomacy Conference is the second of a series of our international conferences dedicated to enhancing awareness and understanding of governing institutions. The conference is organized by the ICD and other leading organizations.

Since the Cold War, the global power axis has shifted significantly, from a bipolar world order into multiple of poles of influence, rapid market liberalization and a considerable synergy of global interdependence. This shift in power relations has not been unproblematic, especially for those countries that have been sidelined from the international decision-making process. The African Union is therefore a prominent example of the necessity of collaboration in order to protect and promote individual interests in the current international setting.

This conference will emphasize how cultural diplomacy can be used as an increasingly useful tool for building cooperation both regionally and globally, and explores avenues through which this new form of diplomacy can be used as a driving force to foster good governance, development and the promotion of human rights though the AU.

To apply please visit:
http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/experienceafrica/index.php?en_aucdc-2011_application-form

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The Power of Africa

Africa as a Stronger Actor on the International Stage (Paris, March 13th-16th, 2012)
http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/experienceafrica/index.php?the-power-of-africa

The Power of Africa is the third Africa related conference that is being hosted in the beginning of 2012. It will focus on the possibilities and barriers that the African countries are facing in terms of economic and political bargaining power as well as the prospect of speaking with one voice on the international stage.

The conference will in particular address the expectations and opinions that the outside world holds of African development and how this often diverges with what might be more realistic and customized solutions on the ground. One aim of the conference is thus to debate whether alternative forms of institutional rule and economic models can be deemed more effective in Africa than the established forms of Western governance. The conference will look at global as well as local perceptions of African leadership and development, and the bilateral trade relationships that Africa has with China and India. Furthermore we will explore the role of the African Union as well as civil societies in enhancing interregional relations within Africa and what prospects this holds for its future international image and bargaining power.

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The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy is an international, not-for-profit, non-governmental organization with headquarters in Berlin, Germany. The goal of the ICD is to promote global peace and stability by strengthening and supporting intercultural relations at all levels. Over the past decade the ICD has grown to become one of Europe’s largest independent cultural exchange organizations, hosting programs that facilitate interaction among individuals of all cultural, academic, and professional backgrounds, from across the world.

Previous Events

Previous events held by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy include the International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin, May 11th-15th 2011 – www.icd-internationalsymposium.org), which hosted The Hon. Lucinda Creighton – Minister of European Affairs of Ireland; The Hon. Michael Chertoff – Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security; The Hon. Rexhep Meidani – Former President of Albania; The Hon. Senator Tim Hutchinson – Former United States Senator from Arkansas; The Hon. Judge Theodor Meron - Former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; The Hon. Yasar Yakis – Former Foreign Minister of Turkey

In March 2011 the ICD hosted the Berlin International Economics Congress 2011 (Berlin, March 9th – 12th 2011 – www.biec.de ), which hosted The Hon. Nahas Angula – Prime minister of Namibia; The Hon. Jean-Paul Adam – Foreign Minister of the Republic of Seychelles; The Hon. Alberto Jose Guevara Obregon – Minister of Finance of Nicaragua; The Hon. Al Imam Al Sadig Al Mahdi - Former Prime minister of Sudan; The Hon. Akua Sena Dansua – Minister for Tourism of Ghana; and The Hon. Edmund Bartlett – Minister of Tourism of Jamaica.

Please address any additional queries to info@culturaldiplomacy.org or toubbe@culturaldiplomacy.org

We look forward to hear from you soon

With warmest regards

December 8, 2011 Read More

Friday links

1. Unsere Frauen bleiben frei! – On Islamophobia in Berlin

2. Threat to bomb 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos? Yes, it has something to do with Boko Haram.

3. Why Nigeria recognised Libya transition council – Minister for foreign affairs explains

4. On Libyan revolutionaries and racism. See also Jina Moore on the same topic

5. On the failure of African Union to help the continent’s starving people

September 2, 2011 Read More

CFP – Borders and Borderlands: Contested Spaces

15th Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality, March 28 – 31, 2012

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new era seemed to have opened up: a world without borders and thus – potentially – a world with less conflict and more freedom. Today, more than 20 years later, we can observe that some border systems have softened while others have been consolidated, and many more border-based regulations have been created on national and supra-national levels. The nation-state has not disappeared and neither have its borders. However, borders and borderlands cannot be reduced to spaces of division and conflict but they also exist as spaces of social, ethnic, cultural and economic blending – territories of their own. In the tradition of previous Berlin Roundtables held on urban development, transnational risks, human rights, and cultural diversity the 15th Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality will focus on borders and borderlands as contested spaces.

For further details please see the background paper.

Conference Format
The 15th Berlin Roundtables will be held at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) from March 28 – 31, 2012. Based on an international essay competition, approximately 45 applicants will be invited to discuss their research, concerns and agendas with peers and prominent scholars in Berlin. The Irmgard Coninx Foundation will cover travel to and accommodation in Berlin.
Discussions will take place in three workshops:

“The Social Life of Borders and Borderlands” chaired by Julie Y. Chu (Anthropology, University of Chicago) and Tatiana Zhurzhenko (Political Science, University of Vienna),
“The Politics of Borders: Security and Control” chaired by Mattias Kumm (Law, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, WZB and New York University) and Eric Tagliacozzo (History, Cornell University),
“Natural Resources and the Environment along Borders and Borderlands: Conflicts and Solutions” chaired by Michael Redclift (Geography, King’s College London) and Maria Tysiachniuk (Environmental Unit, Center for Independent Research St. Petersburg).

The conference will be accompanied by evening lectures. Guest speakers will be announced soon.

Eligibility and Application Procedure
The call for papers extends to scholars (max. up to 5 years after Ph.D.) and practitioners (e.g. workers in governmental or urban services, NGOs, journalists). Please submit your paper (maximum 3500 words including footnotes and bibliography), an abstract (max. 300 words), a narrative biography and a CV using the online submission form and the style sheets for your abstract and essay.Submission deadline is November 30, 2011. Please note that co-authorship and already published papers will not be accepted. All participants are expected to actively participate during all days of this workshop.

Irmgard Coninx Research Grant
Conference participants are eligible to apply for one of up to three short-term fellowships to be used at the WZB in Berlin. For further information on the fellowship please visit our research grant site. Conference participants will receive all necessary details on the grant application shortly before the conference.

August 16, 2011 Read More

On the history of the corporation

I was at a talk by Joel Bakan, writer and co-creator of the documentary The Corporation today here in Berlin. In the spirit of all that, let me share this story that has been sitting on my desktop for the past couple of days. By Venkatesh Rao:

On 8 June, a Scottish banker named Alexander Fordyce shorted the collapsing Company’s shares in the London markets. But a momentary bounce-back in the stock ruined his plans, and he skipped town leaving £550,000 in debt. Much of this was owed to the Ayr Bank, which imploded. In less than three weeks, another 30 banks collapsed across Europe, bringing trade to a standstill. On July 15, the directors of the Company applied to the Bank of England for a £400,000 loan. Two weeks later, they wanted another £300,000. By August, the directors wanted a £1 million bailout. The news began leaking out and seemingly contrite executives, running from angry shareholders, faced furious Parliament members. By January, the terms of a comprehensive bailout were worked out, and the British government inserted its czars into the Company’s management to ensure compliance with its terms.

If this sounds eerily familiar, it shouldn’t. The year was 1772, exactly 239 years ago today, the apogee of power for the corporation as a business construct. The company was the British East India company (EIC). The bubble that burst was the East India Bubble. Between the founding of the EIC in 1600 and the post-subprime world of 2011, the idea of the corporation was born, matured, over-extended, reined-in, refined, patched, updated, over-extended again, propped-up and finally widely declared to be obsolete. Between 2011 and 2100, it will decline — hopefully gracefully — into a well-behaved retiree on the economic scene.

Here.

June 28, 2011 Read More

In praise of futile acts of resistance

Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin(Jeder stirbt für sich allein), written in 1946, 18 months after the end of the Second World War, is based on the true story of Elise and Otto Hampel, a working-class couple who lived in Berlin during the Nazi period. After the death of Elise’s brother in the war, the couple started dropping postcards calling for civil disobedience around the city. They dropped hundreds of cards until the Gestapo caught them.

In Hans Fallada’s version, the couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, lost their son in the war. Like the couple that inspired the book, they too decided to start dropping postcards around the city. After they were caught, the following conversation went on between Inspector Escherich and Otto Quangel, after the inspector told him that of the two hundred and seventy-six postcards and nine letters he wrote and dropped around Berlin, only eighteen were not brought to the Gestapo by those who found them:

‘So I’ve accomplished nothing?’

‘So you’ve accomplished nothing – certainly nothing that you would have wanted to accomplish! But you should be glad of that, Quangel, because it will certainly help to bring about a reduction in your punishment! Maybe you’ll get off with fifteen or twenty years!’

Quangel shuddered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No!’

‘What did you expect anyway, Quangel? You, an ordinary worker, taking on the Führer, who is backed by the Party, the Wehrmacht, the SS, the SA? The Führer, who has already conquered half the world and will overcome the last of our enemies in another year or two? It’s ludicrous! You must have known you had no chance! It’s a gnat against an elephant. I don’t understand it, a sensible man like you!’

‘No, and you will never understand it, either. You see, it doesn’t matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not. I had to fight, and given the chance, I would do it again. Only I would do it very differently.’

Apart from reading of the fear in which everyday Germans lived during the Nazi period, the feeling I had while I was reading the book nearly matches in intensity the one I had when I visited the site of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp (blogged here). Any attempt to understand why an ordinary person would commit atrocious acts of evil needs to be matched by an attempt to understand why some would not cave in the face of fear. And not just refuse to cave, but actually commit futile acts of resistance, such as dropping postcards inciting civil disobedience.

Reading through the book, one could see the futility of the acts of the couple, but one nevertheless joins Hans Fallada in applause. Even if their resistance was not of the same scale as that of von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators (remember the movie Valkyrie?), one applauds their refusal to be sucked in by the promises that joining the party held, or by the fear that ruled everyday life in Germany during the Nazi era.

In the Afterword in the version of the book that I read, Geoff Wilkes of the University of Queensland writes, ‘whereas Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) dissects and anlyses the “banality of evil”, Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin comprehends and honours the banality of good.’

April 5, 2011 Read More

Arm aber sexy (poor but sexy)

Jonathan Rosenthal, The Economist’s European finance correspondent writes about my (for now) adopted city, Berlin:

Iconoclasm is not just the preserve of the rebellious poor. In Berlin’s opera houses—there are still three, despite the broken budget—audiences are known to boo and hiss. When I went to a performance directed by Nigel Kennedy earlier this year at the Berliner Philharmonie, which was beautiful if unconventional, I found people brazenly getting up from their seats to leave before the end. That may have been because the bad boy of Vivaldi had upset their sense ofOrdnung by discarding the programme. Yet a few months later the audience almost flattened Daniel Barenboim in their rush to leave the concert hall before him.

For all this, Berlin is a very human city and easy to love. A stranger once ran two blocks to hand me a tiny shoe that my infant son had thrown from his stroller. When my wife got into a taxi with a child who was upset, the driver started singing to calm him down. And the city’s many Kindercafés provide a remarkably grown-up environment to drink good coffee while the children head for the communal pile of toys in a sandpit. Berlin’s suburbs are surprisingly compact and easy to get around. London, it is often said, is a city of villages, but that has more to do with its origins than a real sense of kinship. Berlin really is a city of neighbourhoods. Most have been built with a village-like communalism in mind. Park benches are set close to one another, so that strangers can talk. And sharing tables in restaurants is common, as long as you remember to make the ritual enquiry, “Is this free?”

You come across thoughtfulness in unexpected places. I saw a pierced, tattooed and black-clad young man waiting for the lights to change before crossing an empty road. “It sets a bad example for children,” he told me when I wondered why he, of all people, should be so obedient. In this tangle of contradictions, the thing that perplexes me most is the seeming inability of Berliners to form a queue. In this regard there are two sorts of Berliners. Some of my German friends take umbrage at the notion that they are pushy. Yet when quizzed they confess that if confronted with, say, a single queue in front of two ATM machines, they would unthinkingly walk straight to the front to form a second line. The second sort of Berliner tells me that they have noticed when travelling abroad how foreigners line up and often have gates and ropes to guide them. Yet they find this infantilising and an assault on liberty. “Free people”, one tells me, “don’t queue.” I finally felt I had gone native late one night at the main railway station when I pushed past a throng of people waiting for taxis and hailed the first one I saw. As I got in I overheard the wistful complaint of a German couple who had been waiting. “Why can’t we be more like the English?” one of them said. I shuddered.

November 2, 2010 Read More

Judith Butler turns down civil courage award from Berlin Pride: ‘I must distance myself from racist complicity’

Press Release by SUSPECT on the refusal of the Zivilcourage Prize by Judith Butler at the Berlin Pride on 19th June, 2010:

As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.

Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’

The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch und Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme… No matter what… Worldwide and here in Berlin… This is how it’s always been and will always be.’

In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists’ Jasbir Puar’s and Amit Rai’s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster Terrorist Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease.

This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies: Where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of Colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already – that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live – especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’

It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.

Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin Haritaworn, Jen Petzen,Aykan Safoğlu and Cengiz Barskanmaz von SUSPECT
20 June, 2010.

SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms.

HT Blacklooks

June 20, 2010 Read More

Friday Links #43

1. Is China a developing country?
2. Swedish think tank wants to clean up relief deliveries with a new ethical aid tool
3. Why cycling in Berlin is a dream
4. The corrupt reign of Emperor Silvio
5. Don’t cry for Wall Street
6. Towards a new world economy
7. Why some Egyptians are becoming vegetarians

April 23, 2010 Read More

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Post Tagged with: "Berlin"