Turkey: Statement by the Spokesperson on sentencing of Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem ?mamo?lu
Turkey: Statement by the Spokesperson on sentencing of Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem ?mamo?lu
The decision of the first instance court sentencing ?stanbul Mayor Ekrem ?mamo?lu to 2 years, 7 months and 15 days in prison and banning him from political life for the crime of "insulting public officials"?constitutes a major setback for democracy in Turkey.
This sentence is disproportionate and?confirms the?systemic lack of independence of the judiciary and the undue political pressure on judges and prosecutors in Turkey.
Ahead of Presidential and Parliamentary elections next year, this decision is particularly significant in the context of politicisation of the country’s judiciary system, which?undermines?the freedom and fairness of the electoral context.
Turkey needs to reverse the continuous backsliding on human rights and rule of law now.
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The Hill. Five takeaways from the fusion energy breakthrough
BY?SAUL ELBEIN?AND?RACHEL FRAZIN?- 12/13/22
The Biden administration has announced a breakthrough on nuclear fusion, fueling hopes of further progress toward clean energy.
Nuclear fusion —?the process in which atoms are fused together to create energy — has long been studied as a potential power source.
But various hurdles have prevented the reaction from being a viable option for clean energy, and a commercial effort is still likely decades away.
Here’s what you should know about the Energy Department’s announcement:
1.?It’s the first time a net energy gain has come from fusion
The crux of Tuesday’s news is that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California were able to produce more energy via fusion than they put in. They put in 2.05 megajoules of energy and got out 3.15 megajoules.?
This is the first time scientists in a lab were able to create a net energy output through fusion, demonstrating that it is possible to do so.
“It’s the first time it has ever been done in a laboratory anywhere in the world. Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at a press conference.?
While the technology isn’t ready to be commercialized yet, the successful experiment raises the prospects of larger-scale deployment of fusion energy.??
Previously, the lab came relatively close to breaking even when it?generated 70 percent?of the energy it put into a fusion reaction last year.
2.?It’s seen as another potential source of carbon-free energy
If fusion can become a large-scale power source, it will provide another way of generating carbon-free energy as the world looks to transition away from planet-warming fossil fuels.?
U.S. officials have said they hope to broadly have?an entirely clean electric grid by 2035?and commercially?viable fusion power within a decade.
Like wind, solar and traditional nuclear energy — where an atom is split apart instead of fused together — nuclear fusion doesn’t emit any planet-warming gasses or air pollution.?
“This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon, abundant fusion energy powering our society,” Granholm said.?
“We can use it to produce clean electricity, transportation fuels, power heavy industry [and] so much more,” she added. “It would be like adding a power drill to our toolbox in building this clean energy economy.”
Unlike traditional nuclear energy, called fission, fusion doesn’t generate radioactive waste that requires long-term storage. And unlike traditional hydropower dams, it doesn’t require finding — and flooding — a new reservoir.
The main place that fusion power would be useful if plugged into the current American grid would be as what is called “base load” power: a stable constant amount of electricity that current grids rely on.
In the U.S., about 19 percent of electricity comes from nuclear power, while 60 percent comes from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum, and the rest is from renewables,?according to?the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Carolyn Kuranz, associate professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan, told The Hill on Monday that nuclear fusion does create byproducts that have small amounts of radioactive material, but she said the material can stay on the power plant site and be used to fuel future fusion reaction instead of needing to go elsewhere.
Paul Dabbar, who was the Energy Department’s under secretary for science during the Trump administration, also pointed to some advantages that fusion could have over wind and solar in an interview with The Hill this week.?
“It needs to be windy, it needs to be sunny, it takes a lot of land,” he said of the other energy sources, though he noted that battery technology could be used to improve on the intermittency issue.
However, fusion comes with its own drawbacks. A future fusion industry built around large, expensive individual plants would be dependent on an expanded, high-capacity electric grid to move power across the region or country — something that feels almost as far away at this point as commercial fusion power.?
3.?Breakthrough positions US as leader in global quest for fusion?
The successful net power-producing experiment is a clear mark of success for America’s burgeoning public and private investment into fusion energy — particularly as the European Union, China and South Korea build out their own programs.
In January, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) sustained a record?17-minute fusion reaction, Smithsonian reported.
And the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France?will be the largest fusion facility?in the world when it begins experiments in 2025, according to a statement.
In March, the Energy Department released?a decadelong roadmap?to bring commercial fusion to electricity markets.
That initiative touted the $2.5 billion that the private sector poured into fusion last year — about 3.5 times what the government spends directly.
An April?White House summit?also promoted the fact that two-thirds of private fusion companies and suppliers are based in the U.S. — and that American companies are the main recipients of international fusion funding.
But while it is tempting to think of fusion in terms of a “race” between countries, the drive for fusion power is highly international and collaborative.
U.S. companies?built the central solenoid magnet?for the ITER tokamak — necessary to create the magnetic fields that power and control the superheated plasma during a fusion reaction, according to the U.S. government.
And the Energy Department in November announced?nearly $50 million for fusion research?— of which part will go to support U.S. researchers at ITER and EAST, as The Hill reported.
4. Fusion still years off from becoming a mainstream energy source
The development was a major step toward fusion energy, but you’re not likely to be using this type of energy to turn on your lights anytime soon.?
Granholm told reporters the administration hopes to see commercial fusion within a decade.?
“The president has a decadal vision to get to a commercial fusion reactor within, obviously, 10 years, so we’ve got to get to work,” she told reporters.?
Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the breakthrough occurred, said it could be even longer, taking “decades” before the technology is commercialized.?
“There are very significant hurdles” in both science and technology, Budil said.?
Dabbar told The Hill this week that he thinks the first commercial demonstration fusion reactors could crop up between 2030 and 2035 and that large-scale deployment could come a few years after that.?
“It takes a long time for energy systems to go from testing to full-scale deployment,” he said.?
5. It?has military implications
The applications of this discovery — like the experiment itself — go well beyond peacetime.
While the ultimate implications of this test are a milestone on the road to clean energy, the “more immediate” implications were military, said Marvin Adams, deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
So are the program’s roots: The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses extremely powerful lasers to “ignite” hydrogen and cause a self-sustaining explosion — a system developed in part to test advanced nuclear weapons without having to detonate an entire bomb.?
“You start with a little spark, and then the spark gets bigger and bigger and bigger,?and then the burn propagates through,” physicist Riccardo Betti of University of Rochester told public radio station WBUR.
This is a tiny-scale version of the same process used to kick off a hydrogen or “thermonuclear” bomb — which uses fusion power?to release 1,000 times as much energy?as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, Time reported.
Fusion reactors don’t contain nearly enough fuel to produce that kind of explosion — and a thermonuclear bomb?requires a separate atomic explosion?to trigger ignition, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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But U.S. officials hinted at military applications. Fusion is?“an essential process in modern nuclear weapons” and a milestone like thise was a strong argument for American military power, Adams noted.
The successful test demonstrates America’s “world-leading expertise in weapons-relevant technologies” while continuing “to show our allies that we know what we’re doing,” Adams said.
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Israel's education system needs a change - opinion
The recent wage agreement was an important first step, but it isn't enough to change the reality of Israel's education system.
By?DANA PYENIK?Published:?DECEMBER 15, 2022
The Israeli education system is in crisis, and the severe shortage of human resources is only one of its symptoms. Teacher’s Day, marked yearly on the 23rd of Kislev (this Saturday), is an opportunity to raise the discussion about the changes that are necessary for the system. The good news is: change is possible.?
When I became CEO of Chotam-Teach First Israel, I asked myself if I wanted my son to be a teacher. My answer was “no.”?As the leading person of an organization that is responsible for teacher training, how could I say that I don’t want my child to be a teacher? It was like a punch in the stomach.
I asked myself why I felt this way. The answer, far beyond the question of financial reward, involved the degree of autonomy, influence and sense of meaning that the teachers have today.?This situation must change in order to make the Israeli education system one of the most advanced in the world.
Teacher’s Day?is an opportunity to salute those educators who dedicate themselves entirely to our children’s education. Teachers work daily to promote equal opportunities for every child, to develop their identity and character, and accompany them in the questions and challenges of childhood and adolescence – the critical years for their development.?
Teacher’s Day is also an opportunity to stimulate discussion about the role of the teacher, the role of the school, and the harsh reality of education in Israel. The severe personnel crisis that exists in the system exposes the dearth of teachers on all educational levels, from kindergarten up to?high school.
Teachers had a tough struggle this past year
During the past year,?teachers have had a tough struggle?to secure an appropriate and fair raise in their salaries. The salary negotiations reflected a profound problem in Israel’s priorities, as education is neither a first, nor second, priority. The wage agreement was an important first step in changing the situation, but it is not enough to change the reality of the country’s education system.
The required change in the education system is infrastructural, fundamental and moral.?In recent years, Israeli society has experienced political instability and social polarization, which further attest to the vital need for a good and strong education system throughout the country. Education must be defined as a national mission of the highest order; advancing the status of teachers is the first step toward that goal.
The quality of education depends first of all on the quality of the teachers; they are the beating heart of the system. To promote the status of the teacher, it is necessary to take three immediate steps: give more autonomy to teachers; improve the physical conditions in which teachers operate, and update the modes of learning in school.
BACK TO my son. As a teacher, I would like him to feel responsible for the society he lives in, and to be able to express it in his work. I would like him to be able to make the society of children and teenagers at school a better place, and have the students influence the community around the school. Teachers should have a part in shaping the pedagogy of the school, the culture practiced in it, and the community of teachers that operates within its framework.?
Although teaching is one of the most significant roles in influencing the souls of children and youth, most teachers feel that they are currently working despite, and contrary to, the direction in which the education system is going.?The most important things they should be doing in contrast with the cultural system that instead encourages competition, grades, purposeful learning and memorization.
Between their crowded classrooms and the limited number of teaching hours, teachers also suffer from a lack of autonomy. The?Education Ministry?makes too many decisions regarding education and teaching methods, which are presented to teachers as fact. But teachers, and not necessarily the Education Ministry, know what is happening in the field. Teachers should have greater autonomy in the decision-making process.
In Finland, teachers are given a very high level of autonomy regarding subjects of study, teaching methods, evaluation methods and more. These have been seen as the factors that contribute to Finland’s excellent public education system.?Israel should be competing with Finland for the top spots when it comes to the quality of education. We have excellent teachers here, and they should be given more freedom to educate.?
THE SALARY agreement reached for teachers?is good, but not enough. The wage structure in the teaching profession is not adapted to the changing employment world and the education system. The agreement is not enough to attract young people to the most important profession in the country. A career in education is unlikely to be a person’s first choice.?
The education system today is built on people who feel a mission and urgency to engage in the profession. They are entitled to receive adequate wages and better physical conditions since that is where they spend most of their hours and years.
The structure of the teachers’ work week does not allow them to complete their many functions and missions. The high numbers of students per class, and the limited number of teaching hours make it almost impossible for a teacher to educate. Teachers do not have time left to make personal connections, be introspective, and develop their skills. Being a good educator requires conditions that will allow these to happen.
The school is a complex system. A group of educators is needed to lead it. The school’s leading staff holds key roles, such as pedagogical coordination, management of age groups, and more. It’s a demanding, around-the-clock job. Their remuneration is negligible to the point of being insulting.?
We need to create a new, fundamental approach that rewards those who take on additional and important roles for the success of the school. On a purely physical level, teachers need appropriate spaces where they can conduct personal meetings with students, an office to work in, and workshop areas where special projects can be held.?
THE WORLD is constantly changing, yet schools are left with the logistical and organizational structures of the last century.?We didn’t need the COVID-19 pandemic to realize that educational institutions are almost the last to remain “immune” from any changes.?The educational system should place special emphasis on real encounters between teachers and students, and on inspiring educators who can help students find their way. Those groundbreaking schools that create a different reality have almost no teacher shortages.?
New teaching methods should be introduced into schools: project-based learning, promoting independent thinking, involving students in choosing subjects of study, forming a community that sees the school as a home for creativity, learning in nature, participating actively in the community around the school, and more.?
The craft of teaching is a mission, and good teachers who come to the system with great motivations often hit stumbling blocks. Schools reflect the social gaps in Israeli society and are not provided with tools to change those disparities. Sometimes the school widens the gaps.
Have we given up on creating equal opportunities for every child in Israel, no matter their background – whether they come from the center or the periphery; or their religion, gender and social status? Education can be a real tool for social mobility, and is the main route to social reform in Israel.?
The writer is the CEO of Chotam (Teach First Israel), an organization that specializes in reducing gaps in education through the training and accompaniment of teachers and principals.?
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Foreign Affairs. Germany’s Unlearned Lessons
Berlin Must Reduce Its Dependence Not Just on Russia but on China, Too
By?Liana Fix and Thorsten Benner - December 15, 2022
When Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s federal president and former foreign minister,?received the Kissinger Prize in November 2022, he gave a candid assessment of his country’s (and his own) foreign policy failures. Since the world has changed, he said, “we must cast off old ways of thinking and old hopes,” including the idea that “economic exchange will bring about political convergence.” In the future, Steinmeier declared, Berlin must learn from the past and “reduce one-sided dependencies” not just on Russia but also on China.
As the war in?Ukraine?rages on, few German politicians would take issue with the assertion that Berlin must reduce its energy dependence on Moscow. In fact,?the German government has done so.?And rhetorically, at least, German leaders are promising to ease the country’s economic dependence on China, as well. “As China changes, the way we deal with China must change, too,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz?argued?in an op-ed for?Politico?in November. In a piece for?Foreign Affairs?magazine, he?also argued?for “a new strategic culture” as part of Germany’s?Zeitenwende, or tectonic shift, in foreign policy, which he announced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So far, however, Scholz has been reluctant to upset the status quo with Beijing—not least because Russia’s war and high energy prices have taken a toll on the German economy. Large German companies that are heavily dependent on China’s market are keen to expand their operations instead of cutting back.
But because its economic ties to China are so deep and complex—far more so than is the case with Russia—Berlin must move forcefully to reduce dependence on Beijing. In particular, the risk of a war over?Taiwan?leaves Germany dangerously exposed to economic coercion and shocks.
This coming February, the German government will publish its first-ever national security strategy. Just ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s?invasion?of Ukraine, this is Berlin’s chance to demonstrate that it has drawn the right lessons from the catastrophic failure of its past approach toward Russia. It is time for Germany to lay out a plan to reduce dependence on China by diversifying trade and investment ties and selectively decoupling from China on critical technologies.
HISTORY LESSONS
The United States and Germany drew opposite lessons from the end of the Cold War. The United States emerged from the confrontation convinced that President?Ronald Reagan’s?“peace through strength” approach?and an accelerated arms race forced the Soviet Union into negotiations. Germany came out of the Cold War convinced that engagement and Chancellor Willy Brandt’s “change through rapprochement” (later dubbed “change through trade”) had been the winning formula, overcoming the East-West divide through political and economic cooperation, which resulted in positive domestic change in the Soviet bloc.
The idea of “change through trade” survived the end of the?Cold War?and remained an influential concept in Bonn and Berlin,?Germany’s capital before and after German reunification.?For a generation of German policymakers,?it was a framework that conveniently entwined the engagement of nondemocracies such as China and Russia in pursuit of economic profits with the possibility of transforming those countries into democracies. In 2006, while serving as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign minister, Steinmeier introduced the concept of “change through interlocking”: in essence, by forging economic cooperation through trade and energy partnerships, Berlin would make Russia’s?interdependence with Europe?“irreversible,” according to a German foreign ministry policy paper.?As a result, Moscow would refrain from?misbehavior because the cost would be too high. Russia, after all, depended on revenue and technology from Germany and other European countries even more than Germany and its neighbors depended on Russian gas and oil.
The limits to the theory that economic interdependence would deter the Kremlin from breaking international norms became quickly apparent. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. In 2014, it annexed Crimea. In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, German policymakers thought the economic?costs?would be too high for Russia to attempt a full-scale attack on Ukraine and to overthrow the government in Kyiv. This was, of course, a fatal miscalculation, underestimating the ideological radicalization of Russian President?Vladimir Putin.
CHANGING GEARS
Berlin has come to terms with the failure of its “change through trade” approach to Russia. The same cannot be said for how Berlin engages with Beijing. One of the key policymakers pushing to draw the right lessons from Germany’s dependence on Russia is German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. In a speech in September, she implored German corporate leaders to refrain from “following a ‘business first’ mantra alone, without taking due account of the long-term risks and dependencies.”
The German establishment should heed her warning because the parallels between China and Russia are obvious. In 2017, the China expert and former Australian government adviser John Garnaut argued that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has “reinvigorated ideology to an extent we have not seen since the Cultural Revolution.” That observation has been borne out in the succeeding years: Chinese President?Xi Jinping?has installed himself as a de facto leader for life and surrounded himself with yes men. As in Russia, ideology?increasingly trumps economic?rationality in China. If Xi decides to?pursue his dream of bringing Taiwan under Chinese?control, regardless of the economic costs, the shock waves for Germany would dwarf those caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is in large part because Germany’s dependence on?Russia?was essentially limited to hydrocarbons. Germany’s dependence on China, in contrast, includes a broad range of critical?products and materials needed for manufacturing, such as?such as lithium and cobalt, as well as rare-earth minerals that are crucial for Germany’s zero-carbon transition. And whereas Russia was a sizable but not a vital market for German industry, China is Germany’s largest trading partner outside Europe. Berlin’s dependence on the Asian giant, furthermore, is increasing: German investments in China are at an all-time high. The same goes for German?imports from China?and Germany’s trade deficit with Beijing.
Germany’s?largest companies push back against any comparison between Russia and China. This past summer, Herbert Diess, then CEO of the German carmaker Volkswagen, said he expected the CCP under Xi to engage in “further opening” and to “positively” develop “its value system.” Volkswagen’s presence in China, he asserted, could “contribute to this change.” His successor, Oliver Blume, has defended the presence of a Volkswagen plant in Xinjiang, where China carries out massive, systematic human rights abuses against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur population. Blume has claimed that the company’s presence in Xinjiang “tak[es] our values to the world.” He certainly has an economic incentive to spin the company’s conduct in this way: more than 40 percent of Volkswagen’s global?revenue and likely more of its profits come?from sales in the Chinese market. And Volkswagen is hardly alone in seeking to continue the “change through trade” narrative with Beijing. The giant German?chemical company BASF?is investing ten billion euros in a new production complex in southern China while the company’s?leadership warns?German politicians and the public to avoid “China bashing.”
Scholz did caution German companies “not to put all eggs in one basket” and criticized some of them for “totally ignoring the risks” of being heavily dependent on the Chinese market. But he has not withheld political backing from industry leaders who have defied his advice. For example, on his recent trip to Beijing, he included the chief executives of BASF and Volkswagen in his delegation. Scholz also allowed the Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco to acquire a stake in a terminal in Germany’s main port of Hamburg and did not prevent China’s tech giant Huawei from assuming a major role in Germany’s 5G rollout.
While Huawei has been excluded from Germany’s 5G core network, almost 60 percent of the country’s 5G RAN, or Radio Access Network, is provided by Huawei; in Berlin, that number approaches 100 percent, according to a forthcoming?report by Strand Consult, a global telecommunications consultancy.?As operations are increasingly taking place in the cloud, the distinction between core networks and access networks is diminishing. This makes reliance on Huawei as crucial provider of access networks a security risk. In addition, as the United States intensifies its sanctions policy against Chinese high-risk providers, Germany’s reliance on Huawei stands on shaky ground.?All this?suggests that Germany’s much-hailed?Zeitenwende?in its Russia policy is not yet a full?Zeitenwende?in Germany’s policy toward China.
To be sure, reducing Germany’s dependence on?China?will come at an economic cost. That cost, however, will be lower than the price Germany would have to pay if it remains woefully unprepared for a potential war over Taiwan between China and the United States and allies in the Asia-Pacific. Berlin needs to do everything in its power and work with like-minded partners to deter Beijing from using force to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, Germany needs to prepare for a scenario in which deterrence fails. Both require a drastic reduction of dependence on China.
Scholz is committed to diversifying markets and reducing dependence on?critical products and materials needed for manufacturing.?The chancellor, however, should take inspiration from his coalition partners—namely, the?Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats—who want to move more decisively?to discourage Germany’s?large companies from deepening their dependence on the Chinese market?and to?more explicitly address Beijing’s threats toward Taiwan.?These partners are also?pushing for a Europeanization of Germany’s China policy: as a first step, this would require including representatives from other European governments in the annual Chinese-German government consultations that bring together the chancellor and German cabinet ministers with their Chinese counterparts.
The United States can help by maintaining pressure on Germany to reduce critical dependence on China and offering cooperation, for example, on resilient supply chains for essential technologies such as semiconductors. To reduce the multiple pressures on European economies, the United States?should urgently?address?EU concerns about?distortion effects of subsidies for renewable energy technologies in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. This could be accomplished by using all the flexibility that the implementation of the?U.S. Inflation Reduction Act?provides for exemptions for European allies.
Scholz warned in?Foreign Affairs?against returning to a Cold War paradigm, arguing that the world has entered a multipolar era distinct from that period. This assertion applies to Germany as well: the country must bury its own illusions about the lessons of 1989. Instead of “change through trade,” Germany—in conjunction with other Western partners—will need to employ a “peace through strength” approach to dealing with Russia and China. Such are the realities of a more confrontational world.
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Clearly interesting...