Jerusalem is in the heart of an apparently endless conflict.
Religion, culture, terrorism, military forces and Holy tradition confront each other every day. Most of the world’s intolerance and incomprehension is represented in a small scale there.
The source of the conflict between Jews and Arabs is the claim of a religious priority. Israel claims that the land, as it is biblically written, was promised only to the descendants of Abraham’s younger son Isaac. On the other hand the Arabs claim that the land was promised to all the descendants of Abraham, and the Arabs themselves claim to be the descendants of his elder son Ismahel.
So far all of the solutions for peace have failed.
What do they all have in common? The negotiation processes has the same pattern and the leaders who make the decisions were the highest in charge, head of states.
1 . The negotiation process:
It is common sense to try to work on the easy issues at the beginning and leave the big ones for the end. This is done both in our daily life and in the Israel-Arab conflict. Jerusalem, the water issue, the Gaza Strip are often left to the end. What if we try things the other way round and solve the Jerusalem issue first?
We all know that decisions are made more easily if we are four or five people around the table. One peacemaker can be good and beneficial. Five peacemakers are unproductive. It is problematic if there are too many people around the table. How is it possible to solve a problem when we have the Palestinian position, the Israel position, the US position, the UN position, and the UK position, the European position (which could be divided into 10 different positions) and the Holy See position?
The one I prefer is the Holy See position (Jerusalem as an international city) with the addition of what has been decided at the Taba Summit in 2001 (Jerusalem capital of both states, with both the Israeli and the Palestinian Parliament there).
That Summit was probably the pinnacle moment in the peace process, it was the only time when Palestinians and Israelis came to an agreement. We should start from there. It is just unfortunate most of the public opinion simply forgot about that summit.
2. The leaders.
Decisions made from the top are good, but decisions made from the very top (ie. too far) can be a disaster. How to translate handshakes into a real solution? How much power leaders at the very top have at the local level?
How many steps, levels, bureaucrats, powers are there between their signatures and the problem of a mother afraid to leave her child at school? Who is leading and managing the electricity company? Who is leading and managing the water company?
Focusing on the local level means analysing job-by-job, street-by-street, house-by-house, for us to gain a better understanding. It is also for them to gain a better understanding of themselves.
The purpose is to bring people together, to make them share problems, feelings, worries and successes. “To involve” everybody must be the objective.
Why is IKEA so successful? It is because customers participate in the building process, which is why they love the end product. They feel an attachment to it! If you build your own furniture you will not criticize yourself about your work.
The same principle should apply in Jerusalem. People should work to build the city as a “team”, it should not have been Clinton, Arafat and Rabin in the past, nor should it been Obama, Abu Mazen and Netanyau today.
Jerusalem is a very diverse city, inhabited by Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Catholic: put the people together and let them work alone.
Just before World War I, both the Jews and the Arabs were TOGETHER supporting the allied powers against the Ottoman Empire. The hostility started around 1920s during the rapid influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe and it grew to today’s instable situation.
The Orpheus Chamber orchestra in New York has no director. The players have reached such perfection in their team building that there is no need for a leader. There is no excuse, no scapegoat and everyone is accountable for perfection in their performances.
If we work together on the bus, on the water management, in the construction company, to distribute energy, then we will know each other better.
We will understand each other better.
We will be less afraid of each other.
There must be a first step towards peace.
Note: The information and figures mentioned here are taken from Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is the example of how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results, if they work together!
Few days ago, during my Sunday morning newspaper review, I was catch by this image, a guy holding an hammer ready to smash it on a wall full of graffiti, written in different languages.
I couldn't recognize him, and there was no need to recognize him, it was a symbol, as well as the hammer and the wall were symbols.
Needless to say it was the Berlin wall, day November 9th 1989.
Memories of youth arise, I remember myself watching the TV and my father commenting the fall of Berlin Wall, I was only 6 at the time but I was feeling that something important was happening, although obviously I couldn't figure out what was exactly about. Few years later, during high school, I ran into the whole story by reading German literature, studying DDR history and watching awesome movies like "The Lives of Others", being captured by the complexity of 900th century for Germany.
Leaving aside the Cold War, the clash between West and Ost, Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl and all those political giants, I believe that the biggest service in describing and telling the truth of a divided Germany has been done by the small stories gathered in books and movies written after the fall of the Wall; stories of brave people who fought against the regime, and stories of people who simply suffered because of the regime, its secret police, its collaborationists, its restrictions to travel and so on.
History made by many single stories like individuals who build the society against the idea of State that build its history, predetermined, defined by unreachable powers and therefore unchangeable.
However, common people struggle would have not reached its goal if a certain political situation would have not taken place and this was the Perestrojka and the collapse of Soviet Union. In many cases politics does not work in the same direction of the legitimate desire for freedom of individuals. And this is something which needs to be fixed.
In the same way that Berlin people were silently fighting and opposing the DDR regime, others are now striving in order to guarantee themselves a better, dictatorship-free future. Last summer we saw the brutal repression of the green protest in Iran, as well as in 2007 we saw Burma’s monks and citizens proudly walking into Rangoon streets to testimony their support to exiled opposition leader San Suu Kyi.
We have to support them, we cannot remain silent, we cannot keep on being just another Brick in the Wall, we have to smash it.
Interns: Overworked, Underpaid, Unappreciated.
The exploitation of workers is often something we think happens elsewhere, far away in the sweatshops of the third world. However, for our generation a new kind of exploitation is fast emerging and materialising in more and more sectors: the exploitation of the unpaid intern.
An internship can be a great way to gain skills, make contacts, and get ahead when it comes to grad jobs. However, in many areas like politics, media, publishing, and design, paid internships are few and far between and working for free is fast becoming a necessity to get an entry level job. With the economic climate as it is and graduate unemployment soaring, the intern culture has firmly taken hold, increasing in number and expanding across sectors. Unable to get paid work, many graduates are undertaking unpaid internships to get better experience in their chosen sectors. Unfortunately, the area of unpaid internships remains unregulated and non-unionised, meaning that interns have few rights or means to stop employers taking advantage.
The UK’s National Minimum Wage Act states that with the exception of charity workers and students, if you work set hours doing tasks that other members of staff rely on, you should be paid. Despite this, many graduate interns find themselves being treated as full time staff, but not getting paid. Not only is this immoral, it’s illegal, but regulatory bodies are not cracking down on intern exploiters. Employers are finding they have access to a never ending stream of free labour, which they can exploit with impunity.
The system as it stands is not only exploitative, but exacerbates class divisions and dampens social mobility. Unpaid positions mean only a small niche of individuals can afford to take on unpaid work and get into much sought after sectors. Interns Anonymous, an organisation working to uncover the truth about the intern culture has calculated that the cost of an unpaid internship in London is around £1000 a month. Ironically, this means that instead of being paid for the work they do, interns are paying to work, and for those who don't live in the capital, or can’t rely on mummy and daddy for cash, the only option is more debt, or not getting that much needed experience.
This exploitation has got to stop. Official, regulated and remunerated internships are the way forward. This would be a mutually beneficial arrangement: interns get real experience without being exploited, and employers get skilled workers at low cost, without breaking the law. Access to professions should be based on merit, not social class. It’s the MPs in Westminster that have the power to improve the law on internships. Unfortunately, as there are around 450 interns floating around Parliament at any one time, it is unlikely that politicians will change the situation in their own backyards. Until this happens the choice for some graduates is stark and the exploitation continues.
Learn more or share your intern experiences by emailing
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Kimberley Hobson
From April 20, thousands of delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are expected to gather in Geneva for the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference, a five-day follow-up to the 2001 World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in the developing world held in Durban, South Africa.
Noble principles seem to stem from such an initiative, although reality showed us a completely different picture. The event in 2001 resulted in a “hate fest” of Anti Semitism where the only country blamed for racism, racial discrimination, apartheid and related crimes was Israel. Attendees at that time remember how libels like “protocols of savvy elders of Zion”, a notorious anti-Semitic book, or “Mein Kampf “ were circulating freely in the conference , and how offensive slogans were shouted against whoever seemed to be Jewish.
This year things do not look too much different, as the preparatory meetings were held under the same spirit. Notably major promoters of the Conference have been Arab countries together with Sudan, Iran and Venezuela, places where minorities and diversities (religious, sexual, political, ethnical) do not seem to be very much respected. After long rounds of negotiations Canada USA and Australia decided to withdraw their official delegation, together with some European countries led by Italy and The Netherlands, who regarded the final declaration draft as unacceptable.
Few days ago, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad announced his presence at the Conference, a sublime act which, among other things, consecrates the persecution of Baha’i religion affiliates in his country, with the blessing of the United Nations. Moreover the most cruel world dictatorships representatives are expected to hold the floor, in a triumph of hypocrisy where the other is the enemy and any occasion is legitimate to spit on the Universal declaration of Human Rights, on which the United Nations were founded.
It is sad to see how an important occasion for making the world a slightly better place is missed. International conferences should be an occasion of debate, mutual understanding, and progress; instead we will see pure propaganda aimed at distorting the idea of struggle against discrimination made by countries which discriminate on a daily basis.
I believe that European countries should agree on common positions on those matters, principles like defense of Human rights were conquered after ages of fights, it would be a political suicide for Europe giving up on them.
Michele Rimini
Κρίσις (crisis): ancient greek - a separating, power of distinguishing, decision, choice, election, judgment, dispute
Κρίνω (crino): ancient greek - I pick out, I choose, I decide, I judge
Crisis…
Choice….
Decision….
Judgment….
Dispute….
Is this the time to choose? Yes, this time is the first one for our generation in which we must choose…we are asked to take decisions, to use our judgment, to handle ourselves in hard and risky disputes that could even result in the loss of our jobs, of our social condition…of our lives.
For the first time, people under 30 are called to be really responsible of the future, as they’ve never been asked before…or maybe they just have the real chance to prove the world that they can win against the crisis.
Indeed, I believe that young people have the right sense of flexibility and the attitude to change which is the only way to survive and to exit from this difficult period, with a renovated and strengthened trust in the community, our jobs, our families and our policy makers…
In these months, it is not rare to find young people feeling themselves betrayed by financial leaders, companies’ managers, governmental officers and chiefs…..and that’s maybe right: we’ve been trusting leaders that have failed or, at least, have long lived in a system which was destined to fail.
That is why we should all stand up for a better time, we should tell what we believe could be the best way to start up from the deep places we’ve been travelling towards during the last few months; and we should all never stop keeping our eyes wide open, capturing every small signal of possible future failures or crises, remembering the hard times we’re living in…
So, let’s take this chance…let’s think hard about the way we could contribute to make the change real, let’s figure out our vision and strategy to reach it; let’s start communicating and taking action from our strategy, let’s involve our social, economical and political leaders….starting from our families.
We should never stop imagining a better place and never stop being conscious that we all, as young people, have the opportunity to make it real!
What I hope, today, is that all young people start moving, start taking action, taking decisions and choosing the opportunity to change; I am trying to do it, from my side: I will fail only if I stop believing in my future vision and if I start being afraid of the future.
So, don’t be afraid! We’ve got all we need for change…don’t you think it?
Azzurra
Elections and elections, a perspective on the middle East
Recently astonished by Barack Obama historical victory in the Presidential Election in the US, we are again confident about the power of democracy, as an amazing tool that allows societies to change and politics to take place. Again, we have seen Iraqi people being able to elect their representatives in the Parliament, with an increasing number of women getting involved, and a couple of days ago we saw another important election in the middle east: the Israeli one.
Regarding the latter, few has been told both in Israel and in the global newspaper; one reason for that might be the preeminent role given to the Gaza escalation of last month that heavily caught the attention of the media. It is impossible to talk about Israeli election without referring to what has happened in Gaza, and in general to the Middle East conflict. Going back in time ,we have seen one of the largest military operations against Palestinian infrastructure since the first Lebanon war. An operation that stirred an outcry of public opinion for the number of civilian casualties but at the same time decreased the Hamas level of threat towards Israel and the other Palestinians. Under this lense ,it is worth highlighting few of the circumstances that led to this situation, namely the continuous firing of rockets towards Israeli cities and the violent way in which Hamas overtook the power after Israeli unilateral withdraw from Gaza.
Recalling to this last concept, it is easy to see how things differ among the two players: on one hand , Hamas was democratically elected and then enforced its power through the physical elimination of its opponents, tortures and summary killings of Fatah members are well documented; on the other hand Israel is facing another round of elections with an high degree of uncertainty where political and sexual scandals are "a la page".
In this literally explosive mix it is worth to spend some words about who will be the likely next Israeli Prime Minister; as the elections closed, the victory was given to Tzipi Livni of Kadima who conquered 28 seats in the Parliament, immediately followed by Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud with 27 seats.
With such a great level of uncertainty, it is difficult to say which type of goverment will come out, however there are two possible scenarios: a wide coalition goverment led by Tzipi Livni including all the parties close to the center following Angela Merkel model, or a right wing goverment coalition led by Netanyahu which can easily reach the quorum needed for ruling the country. With the country most likely going right i t is interesting to make some considerations about the future of the peace process, if there will be any. It is most likely that the Obama administration will push for a solution of the conflict as fast as possible, partially to compensate his silence during Gaza operation and to rehabilitate the image of America in the eyes of the arabic masses; at the same time Hamas is repairing its infrastructure and appears very weak in the eyes of Palestinian population in the West Bank.
Given those two conditions and a little bit of hope, there might be an important chance for the peace process again, even with a right wing coalition at the Government. In this particular moment the one who seems to have the strongest credentials for leading Israeli public opinion and neutralizing fanatics seems to be Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawk who opposed to Gaza withdrawal. No other leader could lead Israel towards an agreement without provoking enormous tensions among the population and dividing the country.
A chance for peace is there, we will see if leaders will have enough braveness to go in that direction.
Michele Rimini
“It is our innate urge to activity that makes the wheel go around”
We have been in this world for quite some time and a long time ago the Greeks came up with a word to describe the actual situation of the world economy. This word is krisi, now known as crisis. First used to indicate change in time, opportunity or decision, time passed and the negative connotation arose: “an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty”. People tend to forget that this other definition still remains: “a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something”. We panic every time we hear about “a crisis”, we do not know where to run, where to hide, we do not see the opportunity, we do not see the need for change, we are scared and fear has a terrible outcome: it immobilizes.
Expectations are what mark the speed of the economy. The interpretation of a crisis and its consequences build up the minds of the people that have to take decisions. The negative news that comes from all sectors is shaping them. A self-fulfilling prophecy that we are falling into the abyss is making this fall even larger. We believe that we are going to hell, so be it.
It is important to understand the what, why, where, when and how of this particular crisis.
I have no doubt about the importance of understanding what is happening and what can happen. We need this information, we urge the analysis but we must also start thinking how are we going to get off this bus that we insist on pushing towards the cliff.
John Maynard Keynes on his attempt to explain demand for money stated that there were three main reasons why people asked for it. One is for transactional needs, referring to the money we need in order to buy our every day stuff; the second one is for precaution, in case something bad happens and we need money to cover for it; the third reason is the speculative one and is this one the interesting for us. In this third reason he said that not only risk has a different threshold for all of us, if not that we are dominated for what he described as “animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to act rather than inaction and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities”, meaning that we are not as rational as we like to think we are.
On the real side of this crisis we need that politicians, entrepreneurs, consumers, producers exploit their “animal spirits”. We should call politicians to generate incentives and not only allocate resources, that people recognize these incentives, that entrepreneurs create new ways of making business, that consumers get smarter, that producers become efficient, in other words, that the whole economy takes this opportunity to clean up the dust that has been thrown under the rug.
I know it is silly to say that if we think positive everything will be fine, that if we dream of a better world suddenly everything will change. It is even sillier to sit down and do nothing about it. I like to think that we are at the doors of a new era and that this crisis is holding plenty of opportunities. The only thing that I need now is to spread this feeling.
Mariano Tiscornia
The Financial Crisis and a New Generation
In 2005 I was spending one month in Cambridge, UK, where I had the chance to meet a journalist from NY City and a lovely girl from Florida.
The journalist was very upset about the situation in the US as they were, according to him, turning from a liberal democracy into a socialist oligarchy: “We have fewer companies, the power is in the hands of few banks. I am not a communist and will never be. But I don’t recognise my country anymore. Where are the liberals? Where is the FREE market? This is a socialist country!”
The lovely girl, on the other hand, was very happy about her country. She was 24, she was enrolled on a bachelor's course and she was an entrepreneur: “I have three flats. The banks financed them; I did not put any cent into them. I buy and rent them. Since the house price is going up I sell them after 2 or 3 years and I can make a lot of money. Look this is the picture of my new mercedes, do you like it?”.
I think in the US everything is easy. One can easily make a lot of money, can easily have a fast career, can easily make very important friends. But.
But the same one can easily loose all his money, can easily get fired and can one day, end up being very lonely.
And this is what I think happened in the US.
Few big mortgage companies/banks have been able to play on the edge/outside of the rules, with a complacent government and a complacent security institution.
People who were scared of the situation have been marked as “communist against the free market”.
People with no skills or experiences thought that being an entrepreneur means riding a wave. While being an entrepreneur means adding value in whatever activity you do. And which value do they add if they were just buying, renting and selling?
As easy as the access was to the credit, it has also been easy to loose all the money gained in the real estate market, in the stock market and so on.
This is my analysis; but if you are looking for a more rigorous one, please click here.
What’s next?
1- This is not the end of the United States of America. But it is a new phase, with new protagonists rising up (China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam etc) and others coming back (Japan and Russia). With these players joining the global scene, the market is expanding. It is not going up or down. It is just getting bigger, which means that it will go up faster and down faster. We should get used to daily double digit gains/losses. Nowadays we are in a period of double-digit losses.
2- This is not the end of the free market, this is just the end of the greed attitude that comes from the Eighties, the yuppies generation. It’s time for less Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas in “Wall Street”) and more Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson in “The Schindler's List”), more social responsible entrepreneurs and investors. The Eighties are over!
3 – This is the beginning for some Young People. It is time for us to take more responsibilities and to be protagonists. If we want to get into the field we have to do it now as a lot of companies/ industries /nations are restructuring themselves completely. It is much easier and much cheaper to join the show now, if some fields are starting from zero than it’s time to get involved!
A last remark: business, finance and economics are the sciences who developed the most in the last Century. Why has nobody been able to foresee what has happened?
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On September 16th the Lisbon Council hosted in Brussels The 2008 Skills and Human Capital Summit . The story is well known: Europe suffer the competition of Asia and the business culture of North America, how do we distinguish ourselves? Education, education, education.
When I was young being considered an outstanding student was not exactly the first one of my priorities.
Coming from Brianza, one of the most entrepreneurial Italian/European region, we were surrounded by examples of very successful entrepreneurs without a degree, not a university degree, an high school one.
Finishing high school was already considered a way to distinguish yourself and university was not seen as a smart way to achieve your dreams.
Most of us were used to say: “Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Renzo Rosso have never gotten a university degree, why should I?”
In my life I had the chance to meet extraordinary people. Politicians, CEOs, football players, entrepreneurs, journalists, employees and Nobel Prize.
There is one thing that great people have in common: they are willing to learn. It does not matter whether they hold an MBA or a primary school degree; they are curious and passionate about life, about people. They are thirsty of knowledge, they are hungry of knowledge, and they are looking for knowledge in every single inch of their life.
And this is the future.
Lifelong learning: keep learning, do not sit on your university degree, do not be satisfied with your MBA at Harvard, do not feel comfortable with your company’s trainings.
Knowledge is power.
It has always been it will always be.
But now there is one difference: Internet.
Every single one of us, at any stage of his life, has access to knowledge.
As I wanted to start from Brianza I taught my mother how to use a computer (an apple of course, it’s much easier) and how to use google and check news online. She is now my first source of information.
Next step? Teaching her about wikipedia!
For the one who are young, get to know the languages of the knowledge you want, English French Arabic Chinese Italian Russian German Portuguese... the more you speak, the more culture you can have access to, the more knowledge you can drink.
Cheers,
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Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti ma per conseguir virtute e canoscenza. (Consider your origin, you were not made to live like brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge)
Does Europe have a strategy? The answer is, surprisingly,YES.
It’s called the “Lisbon Strategy”, the aim to make the EU “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. Capable of sustainable growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion and respect for the environment by 2010” EU Council, Lisbon, March 2000.
Some people say this target is too wide, some say it’s the wrong one, others, that it is not achievable.
But the one thing in which everybody agrees: we won’t make it by 2010.
2020 or 2025 look more reasonable.
Being pragmatic, let’s not dwell on the past eight years already spent on the Lisbon Strategy, but focus on how best we can achieve its aims. In order to do this we have to look at the positive aspects and build on our strengths.
Firstly: Since 1943 Europe has become a relatively peaceful continent. Considering how we used to kill each other, this is a great achievement.
Secondly: We have the eldest, most inclusive and diverse education system in the world.
Thirdly: Environmentally, we are leading the way and making ambitious targets. Countries like Germany, Sweden and Denmark have already faced issues that US and China will soon have to deal with.
Peace, Education, Environment: this is what Europe can teach the world.
Peace is the fundamental need of any stable economy.
Education, the fundamental need of any innovative knowledge-based economy.
These together with well designed environmental policies, are the three key elements in strengthening Europe’s economic performance.
I think the Lisbon Strategy is on the right path.
We have only to be more focused, more persistent and proud of what we have already achieved.
Europe; the home of culture, Europe; the place to study, Europe; an expert on peace. Education, education, education; the key for a new European Renaissance