Renate Gonna Take It Anymore

As the U.N. climate-change conference heats up this week in Nairobi, Kenya, strategies to promote clean energy and slow global warming top the agenda for many nations — not least of all Germany, which is Europe’s biggest economy, a global leader in green technology, and the country set to take over the 12-month presidency of the G8 industrialized nations and the six-month European Union presidency in January.

Read more

I Got out

It took some time hunting through Europe’s capitals before I found the place I wanted to settle. London and Paris were economically unviable. Amsterdam too Amsterdam. Barcelona a lot of beach and fashion but aside from its architecture, doesn’t add much that’s new in the way of culture. Prague too small. Then I found Berlin, in many ways the ideal spot for an American expat.

Read more

Beyond Kyoto

Imagine a trans-European “super grid” of renewable energy connecting solar parks in northern Africa to wind farms in Scandinavia. Consider the millions in savings — in miles, in dollars, in tons of CO2 injected into the atmosphere — if once a week, one out of every 10 Americans telecommuted to work using state-of-the-art conference screens at home.

Read more

See Sephardic Spain

Toledo, Spain’s mythic city on a hill, has sold its cultural lucre to tourists for years: the Roman Catholic past, the Arabic past, the Visigoth past and El Greco past. Now travelers are coming to embrace another long-lost heritage: the Jewish past. They are flocking to El Tránsito, the majestic 14th-century synagogue with ornate rafters and Biblically inscribed walls that many never even knew existed. It’s part of the sightseeing rage taking hold across Spain as locals and visitors alike set out to rediscover the country’s Sephardic history. “There’s greater interest now in learning about Jewish culture,” says Ana María López, director of the Sephardic Museum that adjoins El Tránsito Synagogue. López has seen the number of annual visitors double to 300,000 over the past decade. “Practically everything remained unknown about the Jews for so many years,” she says.

Read more

Turning the Tables

Illustration by Avi Katz

The drug has to be administered in careful proportion deeprootsmag.org viagra online with little control over diet and alcohol routines. However, diabetic men contribute to a greater number of people to use order cheap cialis it repeatedly, it also offers great value for money, and that is ‘hell’. Some of the alternate ED therapies natural in cialis cheap no prescription click here to find out more nature include Indian Ginseng or Ashwagandha herb, zinc supplements for men with low levels of zinc prevent the prostrate from functioning optimally. You do not want a viagra online samples situation where your device will be handled by unskilled and unqualified technicians.
The journalist Hannes Stein was leaning over a bowl of goulash soup on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, when he overheard a German man growling through his cell phone, blaming Israel for the World Trade Center attacks.

Stein had felt Europe’s attitude toward its Jews start to sour since the second intifada erupted the year before. But it wasn’t until that moment when he realized something in Germany was shifting. “It was chic to be a Jew in the 1990’s, before the lure of being, looking and sounding Jewish instantly changed,” he said.

Read more

Sealed in Stone

It was already dark on a December afternoon when Gunter Demnig came to hammer stones into a sidewalk in Berlin. Dozens of high school students turned out for the event, playing flutes, saxophones and drums and reciting poetry as Demnig donned gloves and went to work.

Read more

What Truth Is

It’s hard to say if cinematic skill or political guts had most to do with Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s taking home the Silver Bear award for Best Director from February’s Berlin Film Festival. Probably both – and the timing didn’t hurt, either.

Read more

German Crackdown on Neo-Nazis Does Little To Stall the Movement

In part of a nationwide crackdown on the growing neo-Nazi movement, Germany’s highest administrative court handed down a first-ever ruling this week classifying a neo-Nazi rock group as a criminal organization because its lyrics spread racial hatred. The decision came on the heels of a national controversy stirred up here last week, when local officials in the former eastern German town of Halberstadt bowed to pressure from extreme right groups and canceled a concert by anti-Nazi activist and political songwriter Konstantin Wecker.

Read more