The fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989, was one of history’s truly epochal moments. During what became a revolutionary wave sweeping across the former Eastern Bloc countries, the announcement by the then-East German Government that its citizens could visit West Germany set in train a series of events that led, ultimately, to the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

Twenty years on, what is most striking to me are the massive, enduring ramifications of the events of November 1989. Only several decades ago, the Cold War meant that the borders of the Eastern Bloc were largely inviolate; extremist religious groups and ethnic tensions were suppressed, there was no internet (at least as we know it today) and travel between East and West was difficult. The two great Glaciers of the Cold War produced a frozen hinterland characterised by immobility.

Today’s world is a vastly different place. When one of the great Glaciers - the former Soviet Union – melted it helped unleash a potential torrent of security problems. We now live in an era characterised by huge mobility and instability, in which issues such as mass migration, international crime and international terrorism have a much higher prominence.

The end of the Cold War, together with subsequent conflicts across Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, for instance, has led to many millions of people migrating the globe in hope or fear. In the West, this has given rise to pressure on jobs, healthcare, education, housing and cultural identity, causing local populations to feel threatened.

While international migration has generally been culturally enriching and beneficial, it has nonetheless also increased the range of threats to our societies. For instance, the 48 radical Islamicists implicated in terror plots in the United States between 1993 and 2001, including the 9/11 hijackers, all used legitimate immigration devices (e.g. "green cards", student/tourism/business visas, and amnesty and asylum) to get into the country.

Getting to grips with this specific threat is a major challenge and the reason why, as UK Home Secretary, I placed so much emphasis on the need to overhaul our immigration system. Key elements of the changes I championed include a new points-based system -- which represents the biggest reform of UK immigration procedures for more than half a century; electronic border controls (all UK entry visas, for instance, are now based on finger prints); and the National Identity Scheme which features compulsory fingerprint biometric identity cards for foreign nationals.

It is globalisation that lies at the heart of our transformational post-Cold War World. This inexorable process has extended the opportunities of world-wide interchange. Driven by technological advances in transport, communications, and electronic networks, globalisation has delivered massive opportunities in terms of mobility, movement and exchange of people, ideas, values, resources, commodities and finance.

But this same globalisation process and associated technology has also brought major new threats, or intensified existing ones, rendering everyone increasingly inter-dependent and vulnerable. The threat we face is seamless, running across the boundaries of defence, foreign affairs, domestic and social life. For instance, it has left nations and peoples ever more vulnerable to phenomena ranging from international crime and terrorism through to cyber-attack, health pandemics, energy-politics, resource shortage and financial crises.

The net result is that there are far more sources of insecurity than during the Cold War. The uncertainty this generates means that crises (defined as crucial turning points in events rather than as catastrophes) are more recurrent. Moreover, this bias towards instability is exacerbated by the fact that the nature of the potential crises we face is constantly evolving. In the context of international migration, for instance, terrorists and other international criminals are constantly trying to find new ways to evade our security safeguards.

Given the complexity of the threats we face, it is essential as a nation that we continually upgrade our capacity to deal with them by identifying, exposing and remedying our deficiencies. If we are to be able to keep up, and potentially be one step ahead of our adversaries, we will increasingly need to pool our ingenuity to innovate and deliver solutions.

This is a relatively uncontroversial ambition, shared by many. But I believe it requires nothing less than new thinking, new urgency and a new approach to studying tomorrow’s security problems today.

That’s partly why we are establishing the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College, London. The new Centre will address projects of vital importance to national and international security arising from globalisation in the post-Cold War World. The goal is to assess and embed resilience as well as analysing threats; and to extend this analysis into action in outlining policy options to shape our preparation, response and recovery to crises.

This insistence on “embedding” resilience throughout organisational structures and culture is essential given the nature of contemporary society. Where there is, for instance, now a global availability of information through the internet, satellite and mobile communications, resilience to threats must be embedded in a decentralised way (rather than top-down). To the degree that resilience can ever be said to have depended on an elite management at the top of organisations, this is no longer the case -- hence the need to bring together practitioners from the public, private and third sectors with academics in order to combine theory and practice in targeted projects.

The goal must be nothing less that ensuring that government, business and society can not only cope with, but flourish, in the increasingly uncertain times in which we live. The fall of that wall symbolised the emergence of a world offering both unparalleled opportunities and unprecedented insecurities. The challenge of maximising the first and countering the latter is a legacy demanding an ingenuity and endurance from the next and subsequent generations to match that of their predecessors.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989. A team of Reuters correspondents and multimedia journalists from Berlin and London will be covering the major event in a completely new way — Berlin Wall 2.0. The team from The Berlin Project are joining forces with the Reuters text, pictures and TV correspondents in Berlin to present real-time coverage and impressions of everything going on in Germany’s reunited capital city.

You can also view the best of Reuters’ content on our Berlin Wall global coverage page, follow the team in Berlin on Facebook and get a behind the scenes look at Berlin 2.0 by visiting The Berlin Project. Please send us your thoughts and memories by commenting on the live blog below.

Click on the points on the map below to find out where in the city the Berlin Project team have been reporting from and to listen to their audio reports.

More from the Berlin Project

One of the primary aims of North Korea’s propaganda machine is to show its founder Kim Il-sung and current leader Kim Jong-il as all-knowing, parent-like (and at times god-like) figures who devote themselves entirely to bettering the lives of every citizen of the state.

Kim Il-sung, known as the “Great Leader” is also the eternal president of the state formed at the start of the Cold War. His son Kim Jong-il, who took over when his father died in 1994, is known as the “Dear Leader.”

The reality of course is quite different. While the Kim family basks in riches, North Koreans are some of the poorest people in North Asia, who are threatened with famine due to a lack of food in a state that several have criticised for having one of the world’s worst human rights records.

North Korea’s state media from time to time runs stories about events that had taken place several years ago, even decades sometimes, to reinforce the message that its leaders have shown great concern for all the people.

Here is a story that came out this week about a visit state founder Kim Il-sung made to a cabbage patch nearly three decades ago.

    Pyongyang, October 12 (KCNA) — President Kim Il-sung gave field
guidance to the Oryu Co-op Farm, Sadong District, Pyongyang one day in June
Juche 63 (1974).
    He went to a cabbage field where the cabbage grew well.
    He stepped into the field regardless of muddy ground with a bright smile on his face. Suddenly he stooped himself to see a head of cabbage carefully. Those accompanying him turned their doubtful eyes to the cabbage.
    Its leaves had only fine luster.
     After a while the President asked a farm official whether the cabbage had been hit by hailstones.
     At that moment the official was very surprised.
     Actually the cabbages had suffered a slight damage from hail when young.
    However, the cabbages were unusually in good condition so that it was difficult to find the marks of damage.
     The President found out instantly the marks that even the peasants and experts could hardly do.
     The officials were deeply moved by his extraordinary observation.

(Photo: North Koreans offer flowers to a statue of state founder Kim Il-sung to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the founding of the state, in Pyongyang September 9, 2009, in this picture released by North Korea’s official news agency KCNA.)

Under Adolf Hitler, the Nazis tried to extinguish the culture and language of the Sorbs.

This week, a member of Germany’s indigenous Slavic minority won a state election for the first time. Stanislaw Tillich’s victory puts him firmly in control of Saxony, the most populous eastern state - and looks likely to catapult the 50-year-old to the front ranks of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).

“It was a historic day for the Sorbs,” Alfons Wicaz-Lehmann, deputy editor-in-chief of Serbske Nowiny, the country’s only Sorbian language daily, said of Tillich’s win. “It also shows that members of a minority really can rise to such a high office in this democracy.”

Although they now number only 60,000 and have lived in eastern Germany for well over 1,000 years, Sorbs have retained a distinctive culture and language, despite efforts to suppress them under Prussian domination and then Nazi oppression. Partly because of this they have kept a relatively low profile in Germany, a country whose ageing population and low birth rates could leave it heavily dependent on immigration in the years ahead.

A father of two, Tillich knew only Sorbian until he was “about five” but alongside German, the former member of the European parliament today also speaks Czech, Polish, French and English. Though he inherited the post of state premier last year when his predecessor resigned, Tillich had never faced the Saxon electorate for the job before.

Despite being dogged by media reports linking him to communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, he was the only CDU premier to emerge from the three state elections on Sunday with his reputation enhanced. While the CDU’s share of the vote slumped in Thuringia and Saarland - prompting the resignation of Thuringia’s premier Dieter Althaus on Thursday - it held above 40 percent in Saxony as Tillich secured a five year mandate to rule.

“His victory was very important and helps to make the Sorbs better known - because very little is know about us in Germany,” said Wicaz-Lehmann.

With Tillich in charge of a state about as populous as New Zealand, more and more people should start to realise that Germany must see itself as a multicultural society, he added.

“Unfortunately though, a lot of people here still have a problem with that. So there’s a plenty to do yet,” said Wicaz-Lehmann.

More than 18 percent of Germany’s population, or some 15.1 million people, are classified as of migrant origin, i.e. people who moved to Germany since 1950 and their offspring. The number is rising, but is not yet reflected in political representation. Among the 612 members of Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, only a handful are of foreign extraction.

Outside the Bundestag, however, change has been more apparent.

One of the rising stars of the CDU is David McAllister, a 38-year-old born in Berlin to a Scottish father who heads the party in the 8-million strong state of Lower Saxony. On the other side of the political spectrum, the Green party is now led by Cem Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants, who make up one of the biggest ethnic minorities in Germany.

Though their way of life has had to contend with the threat of destruction by mining companies as well as political apathy in recent years, Sorbs are not seeking independence. But they are now looking forward to better days, said Wicaz-Lehmann.

“In the past our people had to duck and steer clear of trouble for historical reasons,” he said. “But I think we’ve now reached the time when the Sorb feels he can bang his fist on the table and demand his rights as well.”

PHOTO: Stanislaw Tillich, state premier of the German state of Saxony, casts his vote at the village of Panschwitz-Kuckau in a regional election on August 30. REUTERS/Petr Josek.

- Erik Kirschbaum is a Reuters correspondent in Berlin. -

Will the party that traces its roots to Communist East Germany's SED party that built the Berlin Wall soon be in power in a west German state?

Or is the rise of the far-left "Linke" (Left party) in western Germany to the brink of its first role as a coalition partner in a state government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) simply a political fact-of-life now so many years after the Wall fell and the two Germanys were reunited?

Will a "red" government in Saarland scare away investors and doom the state, as its conservative state premier Peter Mueller argues in a desperate fight to his job?

Or will the new leftist alliance in Saarland be able to better tackle state's woes, as the SPD state premier candidate Heiko Maas insists?

Depending on your Weltanschauung, that's what Sunday's election in three German states boils down to -- an emotional debate about whether the ex "Communists" in the form of the Left party should be allowed to be part of the next Saarland government or not.

It doesn't matter that the Left has already been in eastern state governments and will probably also be part of the next state government in the eastern state of Thuringia, which also elects a new state assembly on Sunday.

The "Cold War" has flared up again in Germany ahead of Sunday's elections in three German states, a closely watched warm-up for the national election on Sept. 27 when Chancellor Angela Merkel will be seeking a second term.

It's hard to explain to anyone outside Germany why the Left party has been seated in state and local governments throughout eastern Germany for the last 15 years with hardly a murmur while it was until recently an absolute taboo in western Germany. It's also not easy to explain to some Germans, especially those born after the Cold War.

But here goes: Many western voters have until now had a knee-jerk reaction to the Left party -- as well as its predecessor the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which is the direct descendent of Erich Honecker's SED. Westerners remember the Wall, the shoot-to-kill orders, the barbed wire and the Iron Curtain that divided post-war Germany.

"It's not a big deal in Saarland anymore," Maas, the SPD candidate in Saarland, told me in an interview on the campaign trail in Saarbruecken this week. "The CDU is trying to make a scandal out of it.

They've been trying to whip up fears about 'red-red' for months but there hasn't been any movement in the opinion polls. I think that shows people aren't interested in the parties mud-slinging about coalitions. They're tired of those games. They want political leaders to resolve their problems."

Many eastern voters long ago realised the Left party is not the SED that built the Wall. In the east, the Left  has become the most powerful party in many regions partly due to nostalgia for East Germany but mainly due to its fighting for leftist ideals as well as standing up for the so-called "losers" of unification.

"A 'red-red' government would send Saarland down the tubes," said CDU leader Mueller.  And Merkel added at a rally in Saarbruecken: "This state cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of 'red-red'." She does not use that line in her campaign speeches in the former Communist east, where she was raised, because she knows it would sound ridiculous to eastern ears.

The SPD rules out a "red-red" coalition with the Left party at the national level because of deep differences over foreign and economic policy. But it now says it is ready to open the door to such alliances in western states -- after some painful experiences in the last few years. And Maas in Saarland could be the first to go through. The SPD will probably drop that ban on "red-red" coalitions at the national level someday as well after having abandoned it for eastern Germany in 1994.

So is it "The Commies are at the Gate in Saarland?"  Or is it just part of a democratic evolution that the renamed, reborn East German Communists are about to gain a small but important foothold in western Germany?
-
Tune into the Global News blog on Sunday evening for live blog coverage on the elections in the three German states.

Related Story: Merkel faces left threat in German state votes

Photo:A compilation by Reuters of pool photographs and images provided by North Korea’s KCNA news agency showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from 2004 to 2009. The photograph in the lower right was released this week by KCNA

By Jon Herskovitz

The image the world once had of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, with a trademark paunch, platform shoes and a bouffant hair-do, is gone and may never come back. He has now become a gaunt figure with thinning hair who has trouble walking in normal shoes, let alone ones with heels 8-10 centimetres (3-4 inches) high like he used to wear.

A look at photographs the North’s official media has released of Kim over the past few months indicate he is not a healthy man. There has been an enormous amount of speculation about what is wrong with Kim, 67, including a report from South Korean TV network YTN this week that he has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

Kim’s health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North and his actual condition is likely known by a handful of people in his inner circle who risk death or prison camp for themselves and their families if they ever whisper a word about Kim’s problems.

It is a state crime in North Korea to make any comment that questions Kim’s god-like status in the communist dynasty he has ruled since 1994 when his father and state founder Kim Il-sung died.

The most likely way that the outside world will ever receive any reliable information about Kim’s health is if his hermit state invites in foreign doctors to treat him. This appears to have happened about a year ago when he was widely suspected of suffering a stroke. U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources were then able to leak to the media information about what was ailing Kim.

Intelligence sources Reuters spoke to in Seoul would not confirm the latest reports of pancreatic cancer. They did agree on one thing, Kim is still sick.

Kim’s declining health has led to questions in the outside world if the man known at home as the “Dear Leader” still has his iron grip on power over the state he and his father have run since its inception more than 60 years ago.

Within North Korea, images of a weary Kim can actually help him win support among the public.

The North’s state propaganda has built an image of Kim as a person who works tirelessly to better his struggling state. The North’s propaganda says Kim gets little sleep as he travels the country by day and forms its policies at night.

Kim rarely is seen in state media presiding over major state functions or greeting foreign dignitaries. That is mostly left to Kim Yong-nam, the North’s nominal number two leader and its head of state.

If Kim Jong-il looks weak and sickly, it arouses sympathy and support among the North Korean public who feel he has put his own well being at risk working for them.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will likely be more speculation as to what is physically wrong with Kim. Some of the reports will be more reliable than others. But the actual state of Kim’s health will not likely be known until a time the foreign doctors visit again or those nearest Kim feel safe to reveal the secret.

    Unlike millions of Poles who have flocked to Western Europe in the past few years in search of jobs, Jan Malachowski came to Norway in 1986 seeking political asylum and safety from Poland’s communist regime.

    But like many of his compatriots, Malachowski will not celebrate the 20th anniversary of Poland’s June 4, 1989 election, which ushered in democracy in the Soviet Union’s backyard and helped pave the way for the collapse of the Berlin Wall five months later.

    Now a computer engineer who has settled near Oslo with his family, Malachowski says he was a “mere foot-soldier” in the Solidarity freedom movement in the 1980s. But he nonetheless suffered repeated interrogations and beatings from communist security forces. The mass-movement survived a communist crackdown and by the end of the 1980s brokered and won the first free elections held behind the Iron Curtain.

    “We had hope and faith and faced huge uncertainty,” said Malachowski, 55, of his days in Solidarity. ”In those times it seemed we were floating half a metre above the ground.”

    Malachowski says the “Solidarity ethos”, complete with the charismatic leadership of Lech Walesa and blessing of late Polish-born Pope John Paul, has all but vanished.

    Former activists, once united on the “right side” of street barricades, now stand divided and bicker over issues large and small. Even the 1989 anniversary celebrations had to be staged in two different cities because of infighting, leaving a sour aftertaste for many on what should have been a reminder of their moment of glory – a turning point in Europe’s post-war history.

    But the fact the anniversary appears to have inspired only scant dewy-eyed nostalgia among Poles in Poland and abroad, even those who once manning the front lines of the democratic revolution, can also be seen as a sign of normalcy.

   Driven to leave Poland by his ”refusal to die under communism”, Malachowski now says his motivation has “normalised” and revolves around his family. Many Poles, including Malachowski, have proved remarkably adaptable abroad, building new lives in great numbers after European Union membership in 2004 opened job markets in Britain, Scandinavia and many other western states.

   Perhaps knowing that Poland’s future appears secure inside the EU and NATO, Poles are simply too busy getting on with their lives. That would only be normal.

By Jacob Comenetz

A debate about whether Communist East Germany was an “Unrechtsstaat” (”unjust state”) or merely not a “Rechtsstaat” (”state based on the rule of law”) has been dividing the German political class for months — and it now has spilled onto the front pages this week as the reunited country celebrates its 60th anniversary.

What might seem like a nuance of history has turned into a full-fledged battle that is splitting many eastern and western Germans once again along the fault lines of the long since dismantled Wall that separated them during the Cold War.

Many easterners are annoyed that some of their western brethren are labelling the Communist East German state an “Unrechtsstaat” – a term they see as denigrating not only the state, but also its people, as somehow morally inferior.

Few in the east, a region that is also far poorer than most of the prosperous west, would disagree that East Germany was not a “Rechtstaat”. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), as East Germany was officially known, had no independent judiciary, no free elections and a surveillance system run by the Stasi that used brutal methods to quash dissent for four decades.

But many easterners are rallying behind Gesine Schwan, a westerner who is running for president. Schwan has fuelled the debate by saying she would not label East Germany an “unjust state”, saying that was too “diffuse” a term.

“It implies that everything that happened in this state was unjust,” said Schwan, who is trying to defeat President Horst Koehler in a vote in the Reichstag by a special 1,224-seat Federal Assembly on Saturday. “I would not go this far in the case of the GDR.”

Schwan’s comments became a lightning rod in the run-up to the election against Koehler, who is backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and heavily favoured to win Saturday’s vote for a second five-year term. Her unwillingness to call the GDR an “Unrechtsstaat” may even cost her support from the Social Democrats who nominated her. Along with many westerners, some former dissidents in the east who were persecuted by the state say Schwan has it all wrong: the GDR was an unjust state through and through.

The debate was sparked in March by the state premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Erwin Sellering. The leader of the sparsely populated and poor eastern state on the Baltic Sea said that East Germany was not a “totally unjust state” as many westerners believe even though he agreed it was “certainly not a state based on the rule of law.”

Sellering said: “I reject the condemnation of the GDR as a totally unjust state in which there was nothing good at all about it.” He took a jab at westerners by repeating a popular eastern mantra whenever they felt attacked by west Germans: “The former West Germany also had its weaknesses just as East Germany had its strengths.”

Even Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, has entered into the debate — although with her typical caution avoided saying it was an unjust state: “It’s quite clear that East Germany was based on injustice. It was created by free and secret balloting. In order to survive, the system forced people to lie. It was a system based on fear and lies.”