#ikWilHelpen .... ich will helfen...

No, it's not exactly German, but aren't the similarities interesting?

People in Belgium Are Using #IkWilHelpen to Offer Aid in the Wake of the Brussels Attacks

By Marie Solis March 22, 2016

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday morning's attacks in Brussels' Zaventem airport and the city's Maalbeek Metro station that reportedly left at least 34 dead and 230 injured, many people in the surrounding area are still struggling to find safety.

In response, Twitter users have started the hashtag #IkWilHelpen, or "I want to help," to spread the word that not just their thoughts and prayers are with those in need, but that they'll lend a hand. 

Many people are offering not just a ride, but are opening up their homes to anyone who might need shelter.

As to the situation itself, check out Mark Patinkin's column in ProJo today: 

Mark Patinkin: Cruz, Trump playing into terrorists' hands

Sen. Ted Cruz

                     By Mark Patinkin  Journal Columnist

Posted Mar. 24, 2016 @ 9:00 pm

Somewhere, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi heard Ted Cruz’s call to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. and no doubt thought to himself — “Perfect."

I'm guessing he thought the same when Donald Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants.

Because al-Baghdadi and ISIS know one of the challenges they face in their jihad against America isn't just our military — it's our ability to assimilate. And create loyal Americans of all faiths and creeds.

 That’s why it's harder here to recruit converts to radical Islam than in many European nations.

Of course, there will always be terrorists, as we saw in San Bernardino and at the Boston Marathon.

But analysts say the threat is greater in places like France and Belgium because those nations have failed to assimilate their Muslim populations. The jihadists in Brussels and Paris, it's said, came out of isolated neighborhoods where Muslims have long felt like unwelcome outsiders.

It's different here. Keith Ellison, the only Muslim member of Congress, has said the Muslim neighborhoods he represents in the Minneapolis area speak proudly of being Americans first.

It's not by accident — it springs from the vision of our founders who created a nation that, by way of inclusions, almost impossibly melds every faith and background into one.

It is why 10 percent of American doctors are Muslim, 30 reps in congress are Hispanic, a son of a Syrian immigrant founded Apple Computer and an African American is president.

We are almost all of us sons and daughters of immigrants, and yes, most of our forbears faced prejudice when they first arrived, but with an important distinction.

Especially now, American bigotry is unofficial, from the street. What overcomes it is a government framed around laws that require acceptance and equal treatment for all.

That’s why it’s dangerous when our leaders speak against those principles, and laws. That's what ISIS wants.

What Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump seem to miss is that the complex challenge of global terrorism requires the wisdom to know not just when to act — but when not to.

Acting in the wrong way encourages jihadi radicalism. That's what the Iraq war did in the Middle East and what would happen here if we punished Muslims as a group.

Years ago when I went abroad as a journalist to cover religious violence, I often heard a certain question, in Beirut during the war between Christians and Muslims and in Northern Ireland when Protestants and Catholics were at violent odds.

In both places, people asked how we do it in America — avoid such divisions?

The answer, I think, isn't just that this is the land of opportunity — it's also the land of acceptance, where newcomers have a shot at becoming just as American as those who've been here for generations.

Of course, there are many ways America has to actively fight terror: tracking Islamic radicals, breaking up cells, working to degrade ISIS by killing their leaders and supporting the local fighters taking them on.

But an equally important weapon is depriving the enemy of what they want most — an alienated Muslim population here, as they have in many European nations.

We shouldn't give them that.

We should give them what they don't want and we've long had — a land where all faiths and creeds have a reason to feel welcomed, and American.

National Geo: November 2015: Germany's Will To Change

"Germany's energy revolution aims to replace nukes and fossil fuels.  Could it be a model for the world?"  Pages 32-63

By Robert Kunzig

Some of the highlights of this article are:

•  The map/graph on page 44 is entitled:  Germany's Audacious Goal, followed by this text:
"Germany has Europe's second highest consumer electricity prices, yet public support for its Energiewende -- an aggressive transition to renewable energy -- is at an impressive 92%.  The support is rooted in an eco-friendly culture, a collective desire to abandon nuclear energy, and law that allow citizens to profit from selling their energy to the grid.  Roughly 27% of Germany's electricity is from renewables; the goal is at least 80% by 2050."

 •  A graph on page 45 mentions Germany's impressive 27% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990-2012.

• WWII reminiscing (Hamburg's St. Nikolai "Mahnmal" - memorial)

• The updated (&@#$%!) WWII bunkers

• Germany's reluctance to slow the mining of brown coal (lignite), which is one of the few resources the country has in abundance

• Germany's origin myth of being a woodland people (defeating the Romans, etc.)

• Major changes which have benefited Germany include rebuilding after WWII; peaceful reunification; so many communities once thought would be abandoned (from shuttering local nuclear reactors, for instance) are now thriving --some even completely self-sufficient using green energy.

• New smart building and car designs.

See if you agree that the article has a powerful conclusion: 

"In a recent essay William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who has spent decades studying the problem of addressing climate change, identified what he considers its essence: free riders.  Because it's a global problem, and doing something is costly, every country has an incentive to do nothing and hope that others will act.  While most countries have been free riders, Germany has behaved differently: It has ridden out ahead. And in so doing, it has made the journey easier for the rest of us."

25 Years: UNITY October 3, 2015

THE  BPB  LINK: BundesZentrale für Politische Bildung

Find the film 2/3 of the way down on Left, which sums up the progress in assimilating the East with the West.

America’s largest ethnic group has assimilated so well that people barely notice it

German-Americans

The silent minority

 

Feb 7th 2015 | KOHLER, WISCONSIN | From the print edition

   ON A snow-covered bluff overlooking the Sheboygan river stands the Waelderhaus, a faithful reproduction of an Austrian chalet. It was built by the Kohler family of Wisconsin in the 1920s as a tribute to the homeland of their father, John Michael Kohler, who had immigrated to America in 1854 at the age of ten.

John Michael moved to Sheboygan, married the daughter of another German immigrant, who owned the local foundry, and took over his father-in-law’s business. He transformed it from a maker of ploughshares into a plumbing business. Today Kohler is the biggest maker of loos and baths in America. Herbert Kohler, the boss (and grandson of the founder), has done so well selling tubs that he has been able to pursue his other passion—golf—on a grand scale. The Kohler Company owns Whistling Straits, the course that will host the Ryder Cup in 2020.

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group. (Note:  the Census divided Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc.)  In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.  

Yet despite their numbers, they are barely visible. Everyone knows that Michael Dukakis is Greek-American, the Kennedy clan hail from Ireland and Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American. Fewer notice that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky with presidential ambitions, are of German origin.

Companies founded by German-Americans tend to play down their roots, too: think of Pfizer, Boeing, Steinway, Levi Strauss or Heinz.  Buried somewhere on their websites may be a brief note that “Steinway & Sons was founded in 1853 by German immigrant Henry Engelhard Steinway in a Manhattan loft on Varick Street”. But firms that play up their Germanic history—as Kohler does, in a short film shown at the Wälderhaus—are rare.   (Correction:  Steinway is indeed proud of its German roots, per its web page...rsb)

German immigrants have flavoured American culture like cinnamon in an Apfelkuchen. They imported Christmas trees and Easter bunnies and gave America a taste for pretzels, hot dogs, bratwursts and sauerkraut. They built big Lutheran churches wherever they went. Germans in Wisconsin launched America’s first kindergarten and set up Turnvereine, or gymnastics clubs, in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and other cities.

(Note:  There were several distinct  waves of German immigrations.  This article spells out only one.  See also the Library of Congress article above.  -- rsb)

After a failed revolution in Germany in 1848, disillusioned revolutionaries decamped to America and spread progressive ideas. “Germanism, socialism and beer makes Milwaukee different,” says John Gurda, a historian. Milwaukee is the only big American city that had Socialist mayors for several decades, of whom two, Emil Seidel and Frank Zeidler, were of German stock. ...

During the first world war, parts of America grew hysterically anti-German. Some Germans were spat at in the street. The teaching of their language was banned in schools. Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage”. German books were burned, dachshunds kicked and German-Americans forced to buy war bonds to prove their patriotism. When New Ulm, a predominantly German town in Minnesota, refused to let its young men join the draft, the National Guard was sent in. After the war, German-Americans hunkered down. Many stopped speaking German and anglicised their names.
The second world war saw less anti-German hysteria, although some 10,000 German-Americans were interned as enemy aliens. President Franklin Roosevelt conspicuously appointed military commanders with names like Eisenhower and Nimitz to fight the Axis powers. But the Holocaust gave German-Americans yet another reason to hide their origins.

Today German-Americans are quietly successful. Their median household income, at $61,500, is 18% above the national norm. They are more likely to have college degrees than other Americans, and less likely to be unemployed. A whopping 97% of them speak only English at home.
They have assimilated and prospered without any political help specially tailored for their ethnic group. “The Greeks and the Irish have a far stronger support network and lobby groups than we do,” says Peter Wittig, Germany’s ambassador in America. There was no German-American congressional caucus until 2010, though there were caucuses for potatoes, bicycles and Albanian affairs. The German caucus has quickly grown to about 100 members, who lobby for trade and investment as well as the preservation of their common cultural heritage.

Five years ago a small German-American Heritage Museum opened in Washington, DC. “Germany has never been as popular as it is today,” says Petra Schürmann, the museum’s director. German fests and Oktoberfests have sprung up all over the country, and they are not only about brats and beer, but also about tracing genealogy and displaying traditional dress and craftsmanship. Stuff made by Germans sells. And Americans travel to Germany in droves: the young to hip Berlin and older folks to pretty Heidelberg.

On February 9th Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, will meet Barack Obama in the White House. They will discuss the war in Ukraine, transatlantic trade, the wobbling euro zone and the upcoming G7 summit in Bavaria. Unlike Indian-Americans, who went wild when their new prime minister visited America, German-Americans will barely notice.  (Note:  Is that so?  This German-American is paying close attention.  Stay tuned! --rsb) 

Timeline picture credits: Alamy; Getty Images; Ronald Grant Archive

Celebrating Carl Djerassi (1924 -2015)

From Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Carl Djerassi, the chemist widely considered the father of the birth control pill, has died.

Djerrasi died of complications of cancer Friday in his San Francisco home, Stanford University spokesman Dan Stober said. He was 91.

Djerassi, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Stanford, was most famous for leading a research team in Mexico City that in 1951 developed norethindrone, a synthetic molecule that became a key component of the first birth control pill.

"The pill" as it came to be known radically transformed sexual practices and women's lives. The pill gave women more control over their fertility than they had ever had before and permanently put doctors — who previously didn't see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture.
In his book, "This Man's Pill," Djerassi said the invention also changed his life, making him more interested in how science affects society.

In 1969, he submitted a public policy article about the global implications of U.S. contraceptive research, according to the Stanford News Service. In 1970, he published another article about the feasibility of a birth control pill for men. "The thoughts behind these two public policy articles had convinced me that politics, rather than science, would play the dominant role in shaping the future of human birth control," he wrote.

Later in life, Djerassi, a native of Austria who came to the U.S. in 1939 with his mother, wrote poems, short stories and plays. 

He used stock earnings from the company that made the pill to help collect Paul Klee art work, which he donated to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"Carl Djerassi is probably the greatest chemist our department ever had," Richard N. Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford, said in an obituary released by the university. "I know of no person in the world who combined the mastery of science with literary talent as Carl Djerassi."

"He also is the only person, to my knowledge, to receive from President Nixon the National Medal of Science and to be named on Nixon's blacklist in the same year," Zare added.

"Carl did many things in his life — he was a true Renaissance man and scholar," Philip Darney, a contraceptive scientist and director of the University of California, San Francisco's Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, told the Chronicle.

--My original post:  2015: 6. Februar:  "Mutter der Pille" gestorben 

Am 30. Januar starb Carl Djerassi, der österreichisch-amerikanische Chemiker (chemist), Schriftsteller (author)  und Kunstmäzen (patron of the arts).

Er wurde für die Entwicklung der ersten Antibabypille bekannt, die - wie er sagte - richtig Anti-Unerwünschtes-Baby-Pille heißen sollte.

Seine Pille ebnete den Weg zur sexuellen Revolution Anfang der 60er Jahre.

Seine wichtigsten Themen waren:

• die Trennung von Sex und Fortpflanzung, 
• die Entwicklung der Reproduktionsmedizin von der Pille über die künstliche Befruchtung bis hin zum Einfrieren der Eizellen (social freezing).

Die Frauenrechtlerin Alice Schwarzer fasste die Verdienste des Forschers mit den folgenden Worten zusammen (zusammen fassen = to summarize)

"Djerassi verdient ein Denkmal! 
 (This man deserves a statue in his honor....  

Die Pille ist ein Meilenstein in der Geschichte der Emanzipation der Frauen."  
... The Anti-Baby-Pill is a milestone in the history of the emancipation of women.)

Hier aus Köln, Biographie-Filme auf Deutsch

HIER FINDET MAN DEN LINK

... to 30-45 (+)  minute long German biographies of many famous people,
including:
Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Cassius Clay,
Charlie Chaplin, Michael Jackson, Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher, Steve Jobs,
Udo Jürgens, the Fantastischen Vier
-- and so many more.

I'm excited to have found this resource!

Richard Carl Freiherr von Weizäcker, aus Stuttgart; Mann der Welt

 Washington Post

Richard von Weizsäcker, German president from 1984 to 1994, dies at 94

Richard von Weizsäcker, then mayor of West Berlin, with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, center, and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982. 

 By Matt Schudel January 31 at 7:08 PM

Richard von Weizsäcker, a onetime soldier in Hitler’s army who used his largely ceremonial office as president of Germany to denounce his country’s Nazi past and to condemn intolerance toward immigrants and other minorities, died Jan. 31. He was 94.

His death was announced by the office of the current German president, Joachim Gauck, but no other details were available.

Mr. von Weizsäcker was elected president of West Germany in 1984 and held the office as the country’s formal head of state for 10 years. During that time, he helped oversee the country’s reunification with East Germany in 1990.

In the German parliamentary system, the chancellor is the head of government and exercises more authority over the policies of the government than the president does. (Helmut Kohl was Germany’s chancellor throughout Mr. von Weizsäcker’s tenure as president.)

Nonetheless, the aristocratic, white-haired Mr. von Weizsäcker became perhaps the most popular political figure in Germany. He was, in essence, his country’s chief ambassador and used his presidential office as a platform to promote important matters of national and moral principle.

In an address to the parliament on May 8, 1985 — the 40th anniversary of Germany’s surrender at the end of World War II — Mr. von Weizsäcker directed a cleansing spotlight on the country’s greatest national shame, when he challenged his fellow Germans to take responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. He dismissed the commonly held notion that ordinary German citizens were not aware of the actions of the Nazi regime.

“There were many ways of not burdening one’s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum,” he said. “When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything. “Who could remain unsuspecting after the burning of the synagogues, the plundering, the stigmatization of the Star of David, the deprivation of rights, the ceaseless violation of human dignity?”

Mr. von Weizsäcker, who spent seven years as an infantry officer in the German army during the war, was a potent symbol of national reflection and reconciliation.  “Anyone who closes his eyes to the past,” he said, “is blind to the present.”

He called on Germans to view May 8 not as a day of national surrender but as “a day of liberation. It freed us all from the system of National Socialist tyranny.”

Mr. von Weizsäcker’s forthright speech echoed around the world, and he was widely hailed as his country’s moral conscience. He traveled to Israel in 1985, attended the German premiere of the film “Schindler’s List” with the Israeli ambassador and, in 1993, visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

“President Weizsäcker has had a major, positive influence in enhancing Germany’s role and reputation on the world stage,” U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard C. Holbrooke said in 1994.
Mr. Weizsäcker repeatedly spoke out against intolerance toward immigrants and other minorities and attended memorial services for Turkish victims of neo-Nazi violence.

He also took a leading role in preparing Germany for reunification after the country had been divided at the end of World War II. As the mayor of West Berlin in the early 1980s, Mr. von Weizsäcker was the first leader from the democratic western part of the country to cross the border and conduct talks with his counterparts in the communist-controlled eastern sector of Berlin.

As early as 1985, he urged Germans on both sides of the divide to think of themselves as one nation, and he was among the first leaders to call for the national capital to return to Berlin.

Richard Karl von Weizsäcker was born April 15, 1920, in a family castle in Stuttgart, Germany. He was from an aristocratic family of statesmen, theologians and scholars and had the inherited title of Freiherr, or baron.

His father, Ernst von Weizsäcker, was a senior official in the Nazi foreign ministry and served as the German ambassador to the Vatican. An older brother, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, was part of a team of German scientists that tried unsuccessfully to develop a nuclear bomb during World War II.
Mr. von Weizsaecker studied in his teens at the University of Oxford in England and the University of Grenoble in France. He entered the German army in 1938 and took part in the German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, the act that touched off World War II.

Two days later, his older brother Heinrich was killed in battle, which deeply affected Mr. von Weizsäcker’s view of the war. Stationed on the eastern front in Russia in 1943, Mr. von Weizsäcker later recalled, he and other German officers shot holes in a portrait of Hitler. Several of his friends participated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

After the war, Mr. von Weizsäcker studied law at Germany’s University of Göttingen and joined his father’s defense team during the Nuremberg trials, when his father was charged with war crimes. Ernst von Weizsäcker was sentenced to prison and released after 18 months.

Mr. von Weizsäcker received a doctorate in law and worked for a German industrial conglomerate before being elected to the German parliament in 1969. He was mayor of West Berlin from 1981 to 1984.

Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Marianne Viktoria Armgard Helene Doria Freifrau von Weizsäcker, née von Kretschmann (born 17 May 1932 in Essen); and three children.
Mr. von Weizsäcker wrote several books about history and politics in which he advocated a moderate, centrist approach for Germany as it entered the 21st century.

When he left the presidency in 1994, he reflected on the powerful speech he had delivered nine years earlier, in which he asked Germans to own up to the legacy of the Holocaust.  “I wouldn’t take back a single word of that speech today,” he said.

New Yorker Profiles Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel

THIS "PROFILE" IS LONG!   THERE ARE MANY GEMS THOUGH.  GOOD LUCK!

Profiles December 1, 2014 Issue

The Quiet German

The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world.

By George Packer

Herlinde Koelbl has been photographing Merkel since 1991. Koelbl says that Merkel has always been “a bit awkward,” but “you could feel her strength at the beginning.” Credit Photographs by Herlinde Koelbl / Agentur Focus / Contact Press Images

A summer afternoon at the Reichstag. Soft Berlin light filters down through the great glass dome, past tourists ascending the spiral ramp, and into the main hall of parliament. Half the members’ seats are empty. At the lectern, a short, slightly hunched figure in a fuchsia jacket, black slacks, and a helmet of no-color hair is reading a speech from a binder. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the world’s most powerful woman, is making every effort not to be interesting.

...... Paragraph 1 of many!  

Find out details of Angela's youth as an award - winning Russian speaker growing up in Brandenburg.  Learn what she thought of  rebellious West Germans in the '60's (The Baader Meinhof Gruppe) and of Americans.  Read about her initially cold relationship with Obama, which has warmed considerably -- even while he's grown far less popular.  Yes, there are clues to her private life.  There is discussion of Germany's history and politics (including fascinating details about the destruction and rebuilding of the amazing parliament building, the Reichstag).  We also learn how incredulous Germans initially were to hand their nation's government over to her.  And how she's quietly relishing the country's stability now, which has fueled her popularity, while her opponents find she's made of Teflon.

Might she run for a 4th term? Certainly her success cannot last.  -- Right?  

 

Reeducation Camp for German POWs in RI

According to North Kingstown historian and author, Walter Schroder, the Fort Getty and Fort Wetherill complex was a very special one in the USA.  In his book  Defenses of Narragansett Bay in World War II, on page 114, he writes:   Fort Getty played a role in “the most long range and idealistic POW reeducation efforts ever undertaken by the United States.”  In mid 1945, the School of Administration and soon thereafter the Army School Center was established at Fort Getty. This was part of an effort to utilize “handpicked Germans to assist military government officials and military police in carrying out their duties in occupied Germany after the war.” (Schroder p.115)
At Fort Getty, “the vacant Army Station Hospital that had been built in 1941 was used as an education complex.” (Schroder p.115)  

An overview of the Master plan for Fort Getty (2005) on the Island of Jamestown mentions the above, as well as the following:   The POW students were treated as civilians and security was minimal. Among other activities, the prisoners of war built the stone gate at the entry to the park.
By the end of 1945 however, the re-education efforts were reduced and the school at Ft. Getty was closed."

This clip is interesting for several reasons.  The cameraman certainly gets in the way, especially in the first half.  The final 5 minutes involves a discussion between the professor -- and the POWs.

The three fundamental topics include:
   1.  Separation of the military and the civil;
   2.  Separation of church and state;
   3.  Elevation of the Judiciary above every other governmental branch.

"Your problems are our problems.  We're not here to propagandize you, but to enlighten you if we can....  I am open to further instruction, for I am here to learn as well as you."



Do you have a favorite quote from this footage?   

BBC: Angela Merkel

The extraordinary story behind the public image ...



"She matters more to our future than ... 95% of British politicians."  Program Host

You'll hear Wagner's music throughout. 

Clay Pell, New Language Czar

Clay Pell, grandson of Claiborne Pell, pictured here with his wife, Michelle Kwan.  

Language Magazine interview with editor, Daniel Ward   June, 2013

Last month, the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education announced the appointment of a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education — Clay Pell, the grandson of former senator Claiborne Pell, after whom the Pell Grant program is named.

Pell comes from the White House, where he served as director for strategic planning on the National Security Staff and helped advance President Obama’s key national security priorities.

He brings critical experience from a breadth of departments and agencies including the White House, State Department, and CIA, and he has a personal commitment to foreign language study as a speaker of Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. Pell studied law in Argentina and China, earned his JD from Georgetown University Law Center, and graduated from Harvard College with high honors in social studies and a citation in Modern Standard Arabic.

He also has military expertise as a reserve officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, including nearly four years on active duty and legal experience as appellate government counsel for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Before Pell had a chance to get his feet under the desk, Language Magazine editor, Daniel Ward, asked him some key questions:

Clay Pell: Let me just say how thrilled I am to be here, and thank you for reaching out in my first couple of days at the Department of Education. I am so excited to join Secretary Duncan and to continue to serve President Obama in advancing America’s global competitiveness. We are laser-focused on doing everything we can to make sure our country and next generation of students are fully prepared to lead and thrive in the 21st century, including with critical foreign language and international skills.

LM: What languages do you speak, how did you learn them, and how have they improved your professional and personal lives?

CP: Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. I studied Spanish first in elementary school, then both Spanish and Chinese as an exchange student in high school. I began studying Arabic in college and have continued each ever since.
Without a doubt, foreign languages opened up the world to me. They exposed me to the people and places beyond our borders and gave me the skills to work on international issues — with the military, State Department, law firms overseas, and most recently on President Obama’s National Security Staff.
So you can imagine what an enormous privilege and thrill it is for me to come full circle and work with Secretary Duncan and President Obama to equip the next generation of American students with the foreign language and international skills they will need to lead and thrive in the global economy.

LM: Why do you believe it is important to speak more than one language?

CP: At a strategic level, the United States represents about 5% of the global population and a quarter of the global economy. Our growth and competitiveness demand that we find new ways to connect with, work with, and take advantage of opportunities in the rest of the world. Foreign language and international expertise are critical skills to bridge that divide and proactively reach opportunities and cultures around the globe.
Of course, there are many other benefits that come from learning another language — and probably everyone who has built fluency in another language can speak in their own way to how it has enriched their life. Certainly, learning a second language has been shown to improve cognitive development and learning outcomes across the board. And some of the findings I’m most excited about show how study-abroad experience can help close the achievement gap between minority college students and their majority peers.

LM: What role do you see for the Department of Education in promoting language education across the states in the light of budget cuts? Does technology have a role?

CP: The Department of Education has a critical leadership role in promoting 21st-century skills in our nation’s schools, institutions of higher education, and beyond. We are encouraging state and local institutions to weave global competencies into common academic core subjects, into college-and-career-ready standards, and into expected learning outcomes. Personally, I’m really looking forward to meeting and working with everyone in the days and months ahead — students and schools, partners in government and private sector, and the foreign language and education communities as a whole. My message is that foreign language is a critical skill for the 21st century and there are a lot of innovative ways we can work together to make sure our students develop foreign language skills all the way through from school to career.
Certainly, technology is an important part of this, as are partnerships across the board. And the federal government will continue to play an important role, including the Title VI and Fulbright Hays programs that we administer and other international education programs at the Departments of State and Defense, among others. These programs support foreign language, area, and international studies and infrastructure building at U.S. colleges and universities. And they ensure a supply of graduates with expertise in less commonly taught languages, world areas, global issues, and transnational trends — all critical for America’s students, businesses, and workforce as a whole.

LM: Do you have any specific goals in terms of improving language education in the U.S.?

CP: Yes! I really want to hear from the community about all the many ways we can work together. But some areas where I am looking forward to working together include:
Building bridges — Making sure that we are building bridges at all levels so that our students and workforce develop, retain, and leverage foreign language skills from school through employment.
Inclusion — Continuing to expand the participation of underrepresented groups in foreign language and international education.
Technology — Leveraging advances in technology to connect students with cutting-edge language-learning materials, as well as their peers around the world.
Strategic regions — Continuing to support less commonly taught languages, including in strategic regions of the Asia-Pacific and Africa where the President has elevated focus across the U.S. government.

LM: What are your views on bilingual and dual-language education programs?

CP: We support both bilingual education and dual-language programs (dual language being the one of the models by which students with limited English proficiency can learn English and simultaneously maintain their native language). The general support both for bilingual education and dual-language programs comes from Secretary Duncan and President Obama’s emphasis on language as an important skill for the 21st century.

LM: What do you think we can do to improve retention of heritage languages and preserve this valuable national resource?

CP: Heritage languages are a really powerful resource, both for individuals and the country as a whole. One of the most important things we can do is encourage parents and families to continue to use both their heritage language and English with their children. At the federal level, we have funded projects through our Title VI portfolio that support heritage language programs, and I look forward to strategizing with the language community about other ways where we can play a role.

LM: How can we encourage more American students to study in non-English-speaking countries?

CP: I’m really excited to help get out the word to students about the relevance of study abroad and to continue to work to make sure these programs are as accessible as possible. The Department’s emphasis on advancing global competencies for all students is important in this regard, as are opportunities that we support through our overseas programs in Fulbright-Hays and Title VI. I look forward to working hard to make sure more students and institutions know what’s available and are finding new ways to partner together.

Latvia Supports the Euro; Hopes for 2014 Membership in EU

Valdis Dombrovskis, Latvia's Prime Minister speaks with The Economist "Charlemagne" columnist Anton LaGuardia to discuss Latvia's recent successful austerity program, and to justify why Latvia (still) strives for EU membership. Is the solution to the EU's economic crisis really just months away?

Mr. LaGuardia seems practically incredulous that Latvia would consider joining the European Union.  Why might that be?  (CLUE:  In what country is the Economist published, and how does that country stand on this issue?)

FORBES again names Angela Merkel "World's Most Powerful Woman"

The 100 Women Who Run The World

The women who are making an impact and matter most.

From CEOs and heads of state to early adopter entrepreneurs, celebrity role models, billionaire activists and philanthropists who are healing the world, Forbes ranks the women who matter most.

By Meghan Casserly, Forbes Staff   

FORBESWOMAN     

8/22/2012 @ 11:32AM |4,085 views

For the second year running, three of the top five women on FORBES list of the world’s 100 most powerful women are politicians. In the list as a whole, 19 politicians hold court, including eight heads of state. It wasn’t a U.S. election year, which explains the exit of the Tea Party candidates who wielded considerable power in 2011, but overall more than half of the political returnees from last year’s list shot considerably up the rankings.

What does this say about the changing dynamic of women in politics around the world? In the words of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, a little something like this: “People say there are not enough qualified women, that’s one of the biggest bullshit things I’ve ever heard.”

At the top of the list German Chancellor Angela Merkel reigns supreme as the pre-eminent leader of the European Union. Her hold over the economic future of the eurozone (current GDP $17.9 trillion) was made crystal clear this year. As world leaders took turns portending the end of the Euro as currency, Merkel is fighting tooth and nail to keep it in circulation—and the economies of her fellow EU nations afloat. Germany has been behind the Greek bailout, the capitalizing of Spain’s banks and more, but in 2012 stressed the nation’s inability to bail out more declining nations and rejected proposals of pooling national debts to stave off further defaults. The way things stand, what Merkel (commonly referred to as the “Iron Lady” of Europe) says–goes.

• Just behind her, falling for the second year at No. 2 on the list is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, fourth in line to the succession of the U.S. Presidency. As the world ambassador of the largest single economy on earth, Clinton has advanced U.S. interests and policies overseas while pushing women’s issues, development and education to the top of the foreign policy agenda. Greta Van Susteren, a fellow Power Woman and friend of Clinton’s told me last year that her notoriety on the international stage is unparalleled, and makes her different from any of her predecessors.  “[Clinton] might as well be the President of the United States,” she said. “The whole world knows her.” ...
• Dilma Rousseff–who graces the cover of FORBES this issue--is the third most powerful woman in the world from her perch atop the world’s eighth biggest economy, but, more importantly, an economy on the rise. Brazil’s president is in the midst of an economic overhaul of her country, starting with the middle class. The economist and former Marxist guerrilla (See “The Real Deal”) has enacted new incentives to small business owners, large-scale infrastructure projects that ring of Eisenhower-Era America and child welfare initiatives that are expected to usher the country into a new era of prosperity. Soon even more eyes will be on Brazil as the nation will host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics—all the more reason to get those infrastructure projects up and running.
  Also in the top ten: Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Indian National Congress Party, which this summer condemned outbreaks of violence in the northeastern Assam region of the country between Hindu and Muslim groups (which resulted in over 300,000 displaced Indians), and Janet Napolitano, the first female head of the Department of Homeland Security and the woman responsible for keeping America’s borders (air, land, sea and cyber) well-defended. This year was a challenging one for Napolitano’s office, which in addition to reacting to the SCOTUS decision to enforce Arizona’s controversial policies on undocumented immigrants, had the added responsibility of weathering the public tragedy of July’s “Batman” shootings in Aurora, Colorado.
  “I am deeply saddened by the terrible shooting in Aurora, Colorado,” said Napolitano in a statement. “Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies continue to respond to this horrific event and I have directed the Department of Homeland Security to provide any support necessary in the ongoing investigation. We are committed to bringing those responsible to justice.”
  The global leadership of woman stretches far and wide, from the most prosperous of nations to smaller, aid-supported states. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina; Aung San Suu Kyi, the general secretary of the National League of Democracy in Burma; Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, Yingluck Shinawatra, prime minister of Thailand; Joyce Banda, President of Malawi (new in 2012) and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia; all prove that women are not just qualified candidates for the job—but that their constituencies are behind them.
  At home, women are flexing their political muscle in the White House (Michelle Obama continues her mission to overhaul the diets of America’s youth while making the rounds to court the women’s vote in November), the Senate (Nancy Pelosi is the House minority leader), in public health (Kathleen Sebelius is challenged with the implementation of ObamaCare while Margaret Hamburg fights a decline in manufacturing standards for drug makers in America and abroad) and the financial sector (Mary Schapiro heads the SEC).
  While the 2012 list has a strong showing for female politicians, the big news is that looking forward, 2013 could be a banner year. While there isn’t a female candidate for President in the U.S., there are a number women running for election around the world—from South Korea to Afghanistan– who could join these ranks in the months ahead.
  
  
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  Forbes Lists  -------PROFILE, Angela Merkel    

  #1  Power Women       and        #4  Powerful People (#4 after the Presidents of the USA, Russia, and China --B. Obama, V. Putin, Hu Jintao-- and before Bill Gates, King of Saudi Arabia, Aziz al Saud,  the Pope, 2 other Americans -- Bernanke and Zuckerberg, and the PM of the UK, David Cameron, #10)
  

         
• Age: 58
• Residence: Berlin, Germany
• Country of Citizenship: Germany
• Education: Doctorate, Leipzig University; Master of Science, Leipzig University
• Marital Status: Married
• The world's No. 1 Most Powerful Woman for the second year in a row, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the "Iron Lady" of Europe and the lead player in the eurozone economic drama that continues to threaten global markets. 
• As Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal have teetered on the brink of an economic collapse, she has vowed to do everything in her power to preserve the 17-country EU. 
• Merkel also called on international leaders to renew the Kyoto agreement, a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases that she helped ratify as Germany's environmental minister in the 1990s. She has been chancellor since 2005, and her recent public approval ratings soared to near 70%--a good sign leading into the general election in the fall of 2013. 
• Merkel is embracing the Internet, and last fall launched a YouTube channel, Die Bundesregierung, where she directly answers citizens' questions.