Europe Vs. Google:   

Don't think for a moment that it can't happen.  The Europeans appear ready to to try and break up Google.  They've been flighting with Internet behemoth for years, and it's now getting serious.

The issue formally comes to the table as early as Thursday.  That's when the European Parliament considers a resolution on digital rights.  Just how the Europeans could force an American company to break up is anybody's guess.  That doesn't mean they aren't going to try.

Specifically, a German lawmaker has drafted language to break up the Internet behemoth and a vote on it is scheduled for as early as Thursday in Brussels.

Having lived in Europe for years, I can attest to the disdain felt there for American companies who executives think they can operate the same way on the continent that they do in the U.S.

Berlin is leading the fight.  The city was once home to the notorious Stasi secret police, run by a communist dictatorship that made East Germans the most spied on peoples in the history of the world.  Both the German Chancellor and the country's President grew up under the communist regime and they are both extremely hostile to anything that smacks of undo surveillance.

I was particularly stuck while I was living in Berlin by the vehement opposition to Google's "Street View."  At the time, Germany successfully forced the company to block the view of the homes of those who protested having their residences show up on an Internet search.

Another big battle was one earlier this year.  It involved forcing the leader in Internet search to keep part of people's personal history from showing up when someone googled their name.  Score another one for the Europeans.  The "Right to be Forgotten" rule is now being used by thousands of people each day in Europe.

The Europeans have been working for years on antitrust legislation aimed at Google.  The thought is that the Internet search portion of the company should be separated out from the advertising and commercial arm.  After all, Google can tinker with search results to favor its clients.  

Google, by far, is the dominant search engine in Europe.  Why should it be given free reign to modify search results to strengthen its bottom line?  

Simply put, Europeans want guarantees that search results are based on what's best for the user, not what's best for Google.

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About the Author:  A journalist for more than 30 years, Henry Mulak has worked both domestically and internationally.  He made his first visit to East and West Berlin in 1981 as a student, then obtained his Journalism Degree from Humboldt State University where he also minored in German.  In 1999, he became a RIAS Fellowship and studied European Union politics in Berlin, Brussels and Cologne.  Most recently Henry freelanced as a reporter in Berlin between 2010 and 2013.  He's certified to test for intercultural competence in English and holds a CTESOL, allowing him to teach worldwide and now resides in Los Angeles. 

New Duties:  Coordinator for the Associated Press Television Radio Association:

Imagine being caught in the vortex that is today's media and being charged with helping improve content by strengthening membership in one of the world's largest news gathering organizations.

That's me!

I'm the new APTRA Coordinator. My particular chapter of the Associated Press Television Radio Association represents AP's broadcast news members in 17 states, most notably California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska.

Naturally, as a seasoned, career journalist I couldn't be more excited.

The AP is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members, it can maintain its single-minded focus on newsgathering and its commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.

AP’s commitment to independent, comprehensive journalism has deep roots. Founded in 1846, AP has covered all the major news events of the past 165 years, providing high-quality, informed reporting of everything from wars and elections to championship games and royal weddings.

Today, AP employs the latest technology to collect and distribute content. It is in the process of overhauling its video and photography content: transitioning to high-definition, expanding its coverage and building a new, flexible, powerful infrastructure. AP has the industry’s most sophisticated digital photo network; a 24-hour continuously updated online, multimedia news service; a state-of-the-art television news service; and one of the largest radio networks in the U.S. Its commercial digital photo archive is one of the world's largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery. AP Mobile, the AP’s award-winning news app, has been downloaded over 9 million times since its launch in 2008, and AP has a strong social media presence, building new connections between AP and its members, customers and consumers.

Since the Pulitzer Prize was established, in 1917, AP has received 51 Pulitzers, including 31 photo Pulitzers.

AP, which is headquartered in New York, operates in more than 280 locations worldwide, including every statehouse in the U.S. Two-thirds of its staffers are journalists.

I'll be working out of Los Angeles where the AP maintains a robust presence but will be focused on all APTRA's member states in the Western United States.

Remaking Our World:  A View Through The Berlin Wall   

It's a blessing the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall came on a Sunday, giving time to reflect on the momentous occasion.

After all, the collapse of The Wall made it possible to actually visualize the end of the Cold War.

In Berlin itself, the authorities put together what can only be described as an astounding observance.

To drive home how Berlin was divided, some eight-thousand lighted balloons were used to line nearly 10 miles of the city, tracing part of The Wall's path. You can see them here at the East Side Gallery, one of the few places in Berlin where there are sections still standing:

"It's really good to be reminded of where the wall was and what it once meant," said Berlin resident Alex Schaller, commenting to the Los Angeles Times which has made the story front-page news. Los Angeles, after all, is Berlin's Sister City.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reopened the Berlin Wall memorial at Bernauer Strasse, a key landmark, after a nearly yearlong renovation, visiting it ahead of the festivities at the iconic Brandenburg Gate:

This is the portion of the Bernauer Straße memorial to The Wall where Merkel and Berlin's Mayor joined other dignitaries in putting flowers in its cracks.  Note the guard tower, one where East German soldiers could shoot at anyone trying to escape.  Officially, more than one hundred died, but the number is probably much higher.

25 years on, remnants of the Berlin Wall are largely hard to come by. There are fitting memorials like those you see here, but Germany has made sure not to let its memory get in the way of progress. 

Checkpoint Charlie, where I first crossed into East Berlin in 1981, has been completely remade and the area around it is now fully developed.

This is what now remains of the checkpoint, set up by the United States in what was the American Sector, one of four specific areas administered by each of the Allies who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II.

Those wanting to trace the path of The Wall can still do so.  It's marked in the street by cobblestone with embedded metal plagues letting you know this is where it actually stood:

 

I've tried with only limited success to put together a montage of before and after pictures from my time in Berlin, showing what was once East and West Berlin and what is now.  My efforts have been eclipsed by The Guardian.  Click on the pictures here and they dissolve to what once was:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2014/nov/03/the-berlin-wall-in-the-cold-war-and-now-interactive

So, the Wall in the physical sense may be gone, but I've learned that it still lives on in the minds of those, not only from Berlin and in large part to those in Germany, but also with those who were there.  

I would argue that the current dispute between Russia, the United States and the European Union over Ukraine stems in large part from how the Fall of the Wall is viewed in each person's respective country.

As the Los Angeles Times put it, "Russia's natural-resource wealth has enriched and emboldened the former superpower, encouraging the Kremlin to grasp for the strategic clout it once wielded as capital of the communist empire. President Vladimir Putin's incursions into Ukraine have raised the uncomfortable memory of Stalin-era land grabs, instilling fear in many former Warsaw Pact allies. Those jitters have been exacerbated by Moscow's chokehold on energy supplies for much of Europe."

It might be good to mention here that Putin was stationed in East Berlin when he was a KGB agent, a member of the Soviet Union's secret police.

Now to the hard part, the part it may be hard for Americans to fathom.  

The Fall of The Berlin Wall is viewed quite differently depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on.  

The Russian President, for example, has called the Fall of The Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union disastrous for Russia.  The thought is now that Putin is trying to reassemble parts of the old Soviet Union.  Putin largely views western promises as worthless. Russia, he has made clear, is only respected when feared. 

Putin is now using other tools at his disposal to take on The West, including energy resources, cyber hacking and a United Nations Security Council veto.  His popularity has surged domestically as he promises to take on The West militarily, moving into Ukraine and even confronting NATO forces with an increase in bomber flights around Europe and around the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.

As for Europe, the prevailing explanation for communism's collapse is not to American resolve and ideals, but instead to their leaders own continental style. America's threat of force had not destroyed communism. Instead, its absence made Eastern Europe's velvet revolutions possible. By avoiding war for more than two generations, European strategists gave communists time to come to their senses.

And in Germany itself, the old communists are doing their best to make a comeback.  The Left party, or Die Linke as it's called in Germany, has even gained enough votes to put it in the governing coalition of the state of Thuringia.  True, The Left party hardly has the votes nationally to pose a real threat to what has become the status quo in Germany.  But it does show that The Berlin Wall still does live on in the minds of people throughout the region.

No, The Berlin Wall may be gone in the physical sense, but it's still there in the minds of many.  My view is that it may be generations more before it truly falls into the dustbin of history.

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About the Author:  Henry Mulak is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has covered politics, economics and law for more than 30 years.  His made his first visit to East and West Berlin in 1981 as a student.  He obtained his Journalism Degree from Humboldt State University where he also minored in German.  In 1999, he obtained a RIAS Fellowship in which he studied European Union politics in Berlin, Brussels and Cologne.  Most recently Henry reported for the CBS News, Radio Network while living in Berlin starting in June of 2010 and returning to the U.S. in 2013.  Henry is also certified to test for intercultural competence in English and holds a CTESOL, allowing him to teach at colleges worldwide.  He now lives in Los Angeles.  Thank you to Berlin resident, Dr. Dietrich Rein for providing some of the pictures seen here in this posting.

Celebrating the Fall of the Berlin Wall:   

Perfect weather graced Berlin this weekend as Germany's capital celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Fall of the Wall. Here's a view along Bornholmer Straße from what was once West Berlin, looking over a bridge which had been made into a checkpoint by the communist dictatorship that governed East Germany:

In the distance, seen here, is Berlin's iconic television tower, built by the communists to help scramble signals from the likes of Radio Free Europe and to broadcast propaganda to a captive audience.

People Saturday streamed between key points of the Wall's former path where information boards recounted the monumental events of November 9, 1989 when a peaceful revolution led to the border's opening after 28 years.

Celebrations actually began a week ago with the positioning of 8,000 illuminated white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre stretch. While only making up a small portion of The Wall's total 96-mile length, the lit balloons provided a dramatic demonstration of where The Wall once stood.

A crowd that including what is believed to be hundreds of thousands of visitors admired some of the gently swaying white balloons pegged to the ground in a light installation winding 15 kilometres along the Wall's route.

At Potsdamer Platz, once cleaved in two by the detested Berlin Wall and now a bustling junction with shiny modern tower blocks, a small crowd watched East German demonstrators in video images chant: "We are the people!".

"I cried. It was so dramatic," Italian tourist Juliane Pellegrini, 60, a school headmistress from South Tyrol, recalled, saying she had followed events on television the fateful night the Wall came down.

Twenty-five years later in the city where it took place, she said she felt emotional all over again. "It's the history of central Europe."

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, said in her weekly podcast Saturday that the reunified capital of Berlin had become "almost a symbol of Europe's unification after the Cold War".

The weekend observances have been made all the more special by a nearly full moon and clear skies.

The festivities are being held under the banner "Courage for Freedom" and participants include the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose "perestroika" and "glasnost" reforms helped pave the way for the Wall's fall after 28 years.

Gorbachev and former Polish president and freedom icon Lech Walesa, 71, are among those due on Sunday at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity, for entertainment to include rock music and fireworks.

The End of Tyranny, 25 Years Ago:   

Berliners, and Germany as a whole, is celebrating the end of tyranny, marked by the breaching of The Berlin Wall 25 years ago.

It was on November 9, 1989, that a miscommunication within the ranks of the East German Government sent thousands of people living in the communist east to checkpoints along The Wall, eventually forcing it open.

This is one of my favorite pictures I took of The Berlin Wall, looking into what was then East Berlin, down a street blocked off by the "Anti-Fascist Barrier," as the communists referred to it.

West Berliners could walk right up to the wall and paint on it. "Halt Hier, Endet die Freiheit," the graffiti you see that at the bottom of the picture is a tribute to those who fought in the Cold War. Stop here, Freedom ends.

There's no question about it. Thousands died, although only a few hundred have officially been identified. Take this memorial along the Spree River in what is now the Government Quarter where freedom seekers died tried to get to the west.

My most recent tour of Berlin, lasting three years, was largely spent tracing remnants of The Wall. People talked about how it was it was largely gone, except for pieces saved for memorials and for displays like this one at Potsdamer Platz, and area cut off from the rest of the city by the barrier but now a vibrant district:

Imagine my surprise and finding a graveyard, if you will, of pieces of the wall on the outskirts of the German capital:

Taken in July of 2011, these pieces of The Berlin Wall in Teltow, on Berlin's southwest edges, appeared to be in some sort of storage, as if they were to somehow be used later. They have great significance in my mind, representing if you will a rotted ideal that government knows best and that people are subservient to it.

The grayness that was East Berlin is still evident. Take this picture of an old, Soviet-style building with the iconic television tower and Berlin's Red City Hall in the background. There's a UNESCO movement underway to preserve many of these old buildings in hopes of saving some elements of what was the communist's work to make East Berlin a showcase for socialist ideology.

I took this picture of the Soviet War Memorial down from the Brandenburg Gate in 2010. It had been fenced off from a crowd which had gathered for what has been countless celebrations celebrations of German unity.

People gather daily at the Brandenburg Gate, marveling at its history and the fact that just over 25 years ago it had been cut off from visitors by The Berlin Wall.

Tourists love the place and there's no shortage of street vendors and artisans who ply the area in hopes of picking up a few euros. I'm not sure exactly who this guy represents, but he gladly accepts tips from the many children who want their picture taken with him.

Make no mistake, capitalism has won out. Here, Coca-Cola benefits from the sponsorship of one of the many celebrations held every year at the Brandenburg Gate.

The beauty that has sprung up along where The Berlin Wall once stood might be exemplified here. Once on the dividing line between East and West, the Oberbaumbrücke has been refurbished and the U1 subway line has been restored.

The before and after pictures are stark reminders of what once was. Take the parliament building:

Now magnificently restored, there's a glass dome on top from which visitors can look down into the chambers and their democracy in action. But for those wishing for more pieces of The Wall, there's Mauer Park:

These are only a few pictures of what once was and what Berlin has now become. Make now mistake, the weekend long celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the end of tyranny should be remembered as a celebration of good over evil.

Berlin Wall:  Looking Back to Find a Way Forward:   

We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.  Its lessons still reverberate today.  For example, we have a template to work from should North Korea suddenly collapse and the Korean peninsula is reunited once again.  Also, consider that Russian President Vladimir Putin was once a Soviet Secret Agent with the KGB who was based in East Berlin.  Tap into this knowledge and you undoubtedly can tap into his thinking.

I took this picture from my perch in West Berlin during the summer of 1981.  It shows the Berlin Wall while looking into East Berlin.  West Berliners could walk right up to The Wall.  Hence, the graffiti.  But those in the east couldn't get close because of that "death strip" you see there.  The white sticks you see lined up in a row in the background are tank traps, anti-tank fortifications set up by the East Germans.

25 years after The Wall was breached and easter european communism collapsed we can still learn a lot from what happened.  I'm convinced the Marshall Plan saved Western Europe World War II and that a lack of such a plan for Iraq has led to what we have there now, a failed state.

This brings up leadership issues and how we will move forward to instill peace and prosperity in the world.  Berlin, from where I reported from up until last year, is now the capital of the most powerful country in the European Union and the seat of government for one of the most vibrant democracies on the planet.

I'll be updating this blog and the Ah! Channel over the coming weeks to show you what it's like in Berlin now and talk about some of the lessons we've learned over the years.  Please be sure to check back.

Drowning Out a National Election:   

Don't let a high-wire act or the roar of crowds in football matches drown out its importance. An entirely new House of Representatives will be chosen on Tuesday along with a third of the U.S. Senate and the governors of 36 states.

Among the distractions on election eve? Saturday, the television networks dumped their national newscasts on the West Coast in favor of college football and other sports programming.

The focus on live sports, even on the eve of an historic election, should not be a surprise.

Sports is the last bastion of live programing for the networks, given the fact it's still impossible to rely on streaming Internet feeds to provide this kind of coverage.

Besides determining who will run the country, this midterm election is also really a gauge of the media. We are now in an era of fragmented, on-demand viewing.

But the irony is that campaign spending on television advertisements has reached historic proportions. The total cost in the midterm races is projected to go past $4 billion nationwide for the first time.

Now to the high-wire act. There's a death defying stunt on Sunday night in which a daredevil will blindfold himself and walk a cable between two Chicago skyscrapers in a promotion for the Discovery Channel.

But the real nail biter, at least for those who care about the direction of the country, will be the election. NBC and the Wall Street Journal are now out with a new poll, showing 46% of those asked wanting a Republican-controlled congress with 45% leaning Democratic.

It going to be clearly up to each of us individually to keep the nation focused on what will be a monumental election, and, more importantly, to get out and vote.