What an Amazing Conference cont...

---

Sorry everyone, this is gonna be a very long one, so if you don't want to read all of it I'll sum it up.... It was a great conference and I had a blast in Berlin! =) Now for the rest of you, here are the details... enjoy =).... Part 2... (part 3 will be coming)

links you might like

Map of the U and S-bahn stations
Pictures of Berlin - I highly recommend checking this one out. The pictures are really neat. There's also more information about the different places than I could give. My favorite of all of them was the Panoramic selection. Would really look at those. It's a fun site.
Official Berlin Website(in english)
Americans for Informed Democracy- This is the homepage for the organization that put on the conference
Couch Surfing - This is a must check out site if you're planning on traveling anywhere. It's a free online group. People have registered from all around the world and are willing to let people crash at their place for a few nights if they happen to be in that part of the world. It's such a neat idea. Definetely gonna use it at some point =)
Millennium Development Goals - You can get more information about the goals established by the Millennium Summit
The UN Millennium Summit and It's Follow-Up - This site provides documents about the progress being made or not towards reaching the goals

Saturday second day of the conference, evening at Checkpoint Charlie and Christmas Market

The day started off with an excellent panel discussion on the topic The Future of the Transatlantic Partnership After Germany's 2005 Elections:How will the United States, Germany and Europe be able to work together to address global poverty in light of the recent election? How will the results of the German election affect the future of German-American relations over the next five years? The panel had speakers from a nice variety of backgrounds: Karsten Voigt is the coordinator for German-American Cooperation in the German Foreign Office. He's a former President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and former Chairman of the NATO Defence and Security Committee; Hanns-D. Jacobsen is a political scientist and is the Chairman of the Studienforum Berlin and Resident Director of Nazareth College's Fall Berlin Residential Program; Colin King is the Chairman of American Voices Abroad and a lecturer of philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin; Volker Depkat is a history professor at Freie University in Berlin The discussion focused marginally on the recent German elections. The general consensus of the panel was that the relation between germany and the US will really depend on our next presidential election as none of the panelist could see this current administration working closely and improving the transatlantic relations. The main focus of the discussion was the reason for the disillusionment of Germany towards the US. The framework of German-US relations has changed over time. During the Cold war Germany was dependent on the US for safety. Today Germany doesn't fear an attack from it's neighbors which means its dependence on the US to provide safety is lessened, changing the dynamics of the relations. The current decline of trust of the US is similar to the disappointment of a student with it's teacher. Germany learned its Democracy from the US and in light of the CIA scandals and Guantanamo Bay is realizing that the country from which they learned is in fact moving away from what is democratic. Much of the questions and discussion revolved around this very issue. Mr. King mentioned that American values are no longer being seen as universal but rather as specifically American. That change in mindset equivocates a loss in America's influence or rather it's soft power. It changes the dynamics of our relation to other countries. Mr. Voigt pointed out that German-American relations have always been about democracy and values. They have normally been shared. However, with the lack of trust due to the disillusionment of the US style democracy and the increasing perception of American values as being different, the relation between the US and Germany is becoming more strained. (And in a larger picture that of the US and Europe). As stated earlier, the panelists don't think the recent election of Angela Merkel will do much to change this current rift, but rather that the next US election will be important to the relationship. That was the meat of the discussion. Other topics such as the changing role of NATO; how the US and Europe (primarily Germany) could learn from one another in terms of integration and the varying importance of international organization such as the UN in Europe and the US, were also touched upon. Was definetely a panel discussion that provided a lot of food for thought.

After we debriefed in our small groups we had a workshop on how to organize events on our campuses. I'll spare youguys the details from this one as they probably won't be all that interesting for you... (although I found it really useful and I will hopefully be planning an event at Hamline when I get back to the states and may even work on starting a chapter on campus)... After lunch we had our Keynote speaker. This one wasn't nearly as engaging as the panels as it there was just one speaker.. so, I'll skip the details too...The next panel discussion was also another very good one. The topic for this panel was: The United Nations Millennium Summit: Can We Realize the Goals?The United Nations report, released by Kofi annan in 2000, called for halving world poverty and providing universal primary education by 2015. The U.N. is also seeking to radically revamp its security apparatus to realize a safer world. How much progress has been made towards achieving these goals? What has hindered these goals from being achieved? Again this panel was very diverse. Xanthe Hall is the Programe Director for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Germany; Daniel Philip is the national direct of RESULTS in Germany; Dr. Stefan Oswald is a senior advisor for Development Co-operation Policy for the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag; Stormy Mildner is a researcher and lecturer in economics at the Freie University in Berlin; Franziska Seel is the Millennium Campaign Youth Editor for Taking it Global; Thorsten Benner is an associate director of Global Public Policy institute (GPPi). This one was really interesting 'cause the panelists had different opinions. The older generation on the panel was very pessimistic about whether the UN would meet their goal of halving poverty. However, the younger generation seemed much more optomistic and focused more on the progress that has been made already instead of mulling over what still needs to be done. They also talked about needing to raise awareness of the goals. They asked us all to stand up if we had heard about the Millennium goals in 2005, many of us stood up, then 2004, were fewer but still a good amount, then 2003, a few stood up and by 2001 nobody stood up. And this was in a room full of people that are more aware of global happenings than the average person. By raising awareness, they can hopefully also raise activism and aid in reaching the goals. Some talk of the US role in the UN came up. Although most of it was rather disappointing. For example, Xanthe Hall talked about a document about disarmament and proliferation that was being discussed in the issue of diminishing poverty. Her organization is pushing for disarmament of all countries, as millions and millions of dollars are spent by countries on weapons that aren't needed, such as nuclear weapons. In this document the US wanted to add the phrase "The Proliferation of Mass Destruction and the possibility that terrorist may have accesss to them is the only problem." It was so contested by other countries that the document now has no mention of disarmament or proliferation. That's quite dissappointing. She pointed out that nuclear weapons are becoming a tool to get yourself to the negotiating table, such as with North Korea. So what's happening now is that you have poorer countries spending millions of dollars to develop nuclear weapons while their people starve. Seems unjust doesn't it? There was also a discussion of what poverty means. The UN documents measure those living under great poverty as those that live on less than a dollar a day. However, as Stormy Mildner pointed out, poverty is more than just the amount of money you live off of. Poverty also means living without security, education, representation and a voice, access to health care, etc. That means to combat poverty efforts need to also be in areas other than increasing one's income. A good point that was made by Daniel Phillip though was that even in we manage to halve world poverty by the year 2015 our work is not done because it still means that the other half is still living in poverty.

We then debriefed and had a workshop on writing Op-Eds. With that the second day of the conference came to an end and it was time to go out and have some fun in the city. We all headed to Check Point Charlie together. It's a really neat museum. It's a must see if you ever get to Berlin. It's amazing to read about the stories of the courageous people that attempted to cross the border from East Germany to West Germany. Some dug tunnels, some hid in speakers, suit cases, rigged cars, some even just drove cars through the wall. One guy who lived in West Berlin had a wife in East Berlin. So, he found himself a girlfriend in the west that looked like his wife, went to East Berlin with her and stole her papers and used em to get his wife across the border. The girlfriend ended up spending a couple weeks in jail while things were straightened out and the guy had to spend 2 months in jail, but his wife was able to stay in West Berlin. Some made it and others didn't. Some paid for the attempt with their life. It's amazing the ingenuity of people. After that we kind of all went our own ways. Natalie and I went to the Christmas Market together. I love Christmas markets =) Lots of yummy food and neat things to look at. We even both found a couple neat gifts. The market closed at like 11 and we headed back after that (we were still exhausted from staying out late the night before). Was another great day in Berlin =)

---