Saturday, February 01, 2020

Could geoengineering strategies help tackle climate change?
A range of technologies — loosely defined as 'geoengineering' — are being explored as responses to climate change. Yet their effectiveness, and whether they should be implemented at all, is debated among scientists.


Australia's bushfires have brought the devastating consequences of a warming world into sharp relief. And with modelling pointing to temperature increases of between three and four degrees Celcius by 2100 in a business-as-usual scenario, predictions suggest such extreme events are set to become more frequent. 
What if we could reverse the warming that is fueling drought and causing flooding around the world?
That is exactly what organizations like the US-based non-profit Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR), are proposing. The group wants to restore carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to under 300 parts per million, as was the case in the pre-fossil fuel age. Today, the global average measures more than 400 parts per million
"I'm very interested in leaving [behind] a world where our children can survive," Pieter Fiekowsky, an MIT-trained physicist who founded F4CR in 2015, told DW. To him, "that clearly requires getting CO2 back to safe levels.”
According to the foundation, achieving that involves "climate restoration," that is, making sure we're collectively removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we produce. The foundation believes around a trillion tons of carbon dioxide needs to be extracted.
That would require large-scale implementation of nature-based or artificial technologies to suck vast quantities of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to cool the planet —  strategies that fall under the loose definition of "geoengineering." However, which technologies are best suited, and whether to implement them at all, is hotly debated among scientists.

Air pollution resulting from emissions poses a serious health threat

F4CR have proposed restoring marine habitats that store carbon, such as underwater kelp forests
Climate benefits
Rob Jackson, an earth systems scientist at Stanford University,believes that restoring the climate to what it once was is a better goal than merely stabilizing Earth's temperatures.
"We need a new story, a new narrative around climate change," says Jackson, who argues this should involve ambitions that go beyond merely limiting the damage of climate change. "[Climate restoration] will bring climate benefits. It will save lives by reducing air pollution. It will provide a host of other benefits."
One solution proposed by F4CR in awhite paper  last year entails restoring marine habitats that store carbon, such as underwater kelp forests. Another is a form of concrete  that binds carbon as it's made, which was used recently to build a new terminal at San Francisco airport.
There are sectors where certain emissions are hard to remove entirely, such as methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — in the agricultural sector, says Jackson. He recently proposed  a technology to remove methane from the air by oxidizing it to carbon dioxide, which although stays around longer has less heat-trapping capacity. 
Climate scientists have included some geoengineering solutions, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) — the process of extracting carbon from crops and storing it underground — in the majority of pathways modelled in the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.

A form of concrete  that binds carbon as it's made was used recently to build a new terminal at San Francisco airport
"It is actually not possible to limit global warming to 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius, without [removal of greenhouse gases]," Avit Bhowmik, an assistant professor of risk and environmental studies at Sweden's Karlstad University, told DW. "Just stopping the increase of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses wouldn't be enough — we have to sequester them."
No silver bullet
Still, Jackson notes some geoengineering proposals, such as releasing large quantities of iron into the ocean to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton—providing food for fish and thereby rebuilding carbon-sequestering fisheries — are still at the experimental stage.
More research is needed both into scaling up such ideas and into the ecological impacts, says Jackson. 
Even technologies like BECCS are still in testing. Many experts believe they also distract from the urgency of ceasing greenhouse gas emissions.
"I think these long-term goals [of climate restoration] take away focus from the really important challenge that we have today of bending the emissions curve downward," says Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.
There is also concern that geoengineering technologies could create a false sense of security that increased emissions could be removed. Rogelj says ecosystems unable to adapt to current warming are not likely to return even if temperatures decrease.
"Climate restoration doesn't mean that the Earth will look the same [as it did before the pre-industrial era]," Rogelj adds.

Can we improve agricultural practices so farmland absorbs rather than emits carbon?

Reforestation has been flagged as one way of helping to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
A middle ground?
Bhowmik believes it should be possible to achieve a net decline in greenhouse gases without resorting to the most radical geoengineering approaches. The Exponential Roadmap report published in 2019, in which Bhowmik led the modelling work, lays out a strategy focused heavily on nature-based solutions.
To follow that roadmap, the world would need to halve global greenhouse gas emissions every decade from 2020 onwards, improve agricultural practices so farmland absorbs rather than emits carbon, restore large areas of forest and protect carbon-storing ecosystems like peatlands.
"If you follow that route, it would actually be possible by the end of this century to have a substantial reduction in the atmosphere greenhouse gas concentrations. And soon thereafter we will reach the level that was in the preindustrial period," Bhowmik believes.
Climate restoration got a boost in September 2019 when F4CR joined scientists, venture capitalists and youth activists at a UN Forum aiming to spur investment for a range of nascent technologies to reverse global warming.
Even though there's disagreement on what — if any — form climate restoration should take, most scientists do agree that it shouldn't be a replacement for mitigating climate change or helping communities around the world cope with the impacts of rising tempertures.
That includes F4CR. "Climate restoration is a critical third pillar,” says Rick Parnell, CEO of the organization. “[It’s] a third leg of the stool, along with mitigation and adaptation." 
This is an updated version of a previous article.

World in Progress: Who decides what's healthy? Private donors impacting WHO's health policies


The current Corona virus outbreak highlights the importance or international coordination in health, and the World Health Organization plays and important role in that. But as UN members states have decreased regular contributions, the WHO now increasingly relies on private donors, whose agendas also influence international health policies. Conflicts of interest may harm millions of people.

From pioneer to laggard: Animated film in Germany

One century ago Germany was at the forefront of animated film technology. But the avant-garde soon gave way to Nazi-sponsored attempts to rival Disney that didn't pan out quite as planned.




Dancing matchsticks are the stars of the "The mysterious matchbox" (Die Geheimnisvolle Streichholzdose). They arrange and rearrange themselves into shapes, meticulous movements captured frame by frame.

This 1910 experiment by photographer and pioneering cinematographer Guido Seeber is Germany's first known animated film. The genre quickly found fertile ground.

"It was an era when animators were producing drawings in their bedrooms alone at night," says Rolf Giesen, an animated film researcher and historian. In Germany, it was "the small manufacturers" that drove technological developments, Giesen explains, whereas in the US the industrialization of film was taking place.

Germany's golden era of animated film

In the 1920s Germany became an incubator for avant-garde animated film, with boundary-pushing artistic movements such as Bauhaus and Dada influencing the genre. Animators boldly attempting to create "absolute film" played with color, tone, geometry and shadow.

This new artistic freedom leads to many new animated films. Europe's first feature-length was produced in Germany: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger, a paper silhouette specialist. She took her inspiration and motives from the Arabic folktale collection Arabian Nights.

Reiniger (right, with negative reel), and Walter Ruttmann were two pioneers of animated film

S
ince such creative films hardly proved profitable, animators turned to the exploding advertising industry. "Animators earned most of their money through filmed ads. Soups, canned goods and liquors were all promoted," Giesen says. In fact, most people went to the movie theaters for the ads, not for the films themselves, he adds.

Germany's creative and experimental animated-film era lasted from the end of World War I through the start of the 1930s. It resulted in many films and technical advancements, and German artists enjoyed artistic freedom. But it came to a decisive end.

Nazis' Disney obsession


With the start of the Nazi dictatorship, all art that failed to meet the regime's taste, in particular the abstract and modern, was branded "degenerate." The last abstract animated film that was shown in Germany was Tanz der Farben (1939), or "Dance of the Colors," by Hans Fischinger. Many animators could not or refused to come to terms with such attacks. Some emigrated alongside other film creatives in the 1930s. Others found ways to situate themselves within the Nazi power structure.

Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels loved animated films, including Disney ones. Goebbels' diary entry from December 22, 1937 recounts how he gifted Hitler 18 Disney movies for Christmas.

Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' was a favorite film of Hitler
(BECAUSE IT ORIGINALLY TOOK PLACE IN THE BLACK FOREST DURING ROMAN OCCUPATION OF GERMANY)

The Nazi leadership was set on showing this 1937 Disney film in German cinemas. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the high point," Giesen says. "Two [German] film production companies, Bavaria Film and Ufa, fought each another for the licensing rights. Disney demanded a lot of money. It was a daunting price. But it was Hitler's favorite movie. And it was clear that it should also run in Germany."

However, a boycott of German films was soon introduced in the US, and the outbreak of World War II followed not too long after in 1939. The Nazis decided to stop showing Disney films in Germany and set their sights on boosting domestic film production instead.

Read more: Why 'Bambi,' at 75, isn't just for kids

State-ordered animation
"Around 1939 or 1940 Goebbels saw a second American animated film, Gulliver's Travels, and then he thought, Germany could also build such an animation industry that would be in a position to become the European leader," Giesen says.

The Deutsche Zeichenfilm Company ("German Animated Film") was consequently founded in 1941. It received millions in financing. A giant studio was built and some 200 employees hired, but a mistake was made: Instead of hiring experienced directors, animators and artists, ranks were filled with Nazi loyalists, young and fresh from design school but who had little knowledge about filmmaking.

The result was a single short film: Armer Hansi, the story of a canary bird who flies out of his cage and is so scared by the freedom and adversity he encounters that he ultimately flies back into his cage.

"That was the line of thought back then. That's what was seen as good, that you are safe in your cage, in a dictatorship," Giesen says. Despite the great amount of effort invested into the film, it only achieved middling success, he added.

The Nazis wanted less to create direct propaganda than they wanted to depict a safe and idyllic world and to distract from the worries and hardship of war. However, their attempts to build a large animation industry failed.

At the same time, they supported studios in many of the territories of Europe that they occupied, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgian, France and Czechoslovakia. "[These countries'] productions were suddenly much better than the Germans'," Giesen said. Feature-length color productions began to be made, especially in Denmark.

After 1945, animated film production suddenly blossomed across Europe — just not in Germany.



GERMAN ANIMATED FILMS: FROM VANGUARD TO NAZI FAILURE
Scissors, paper, action!

"The Adventures of Prince Achmed" by Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger from 1926 is thought to be the oldest surviving animated feature film in the world. Two earlier films made by Argentinean Quirino Cristiani are now lost. Reiniger pioneered the silhouette film form using cardboard cutouts animated frame by fram. She made more than 40 films.

Looking back at animated history

Today, Germany lags behind other countries when it comes to developing new animated technologies.

There are also very few experts and collections dedicated to the genre, but the German Institute for Animated Film (DIAF) in the eastern German city of Dresden is one exception. Founded in 1993, it undertakes archival, curatorial and scholarly research. One of its goals is to compile the history of German animated film into a comprehensive online chronology.

Most films from Germany's early animation years were destroyed or have disappeared. The trajectory of the country's animated film industry remains an area for further exploration.


German report spells out China human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims

A confidential document has indicated that the German government is aware of human rights violations in China's Xinjiang region, and warns that Uighurs deported back to China may disappear "indefinitely."



The human rights situation in China's northwestern Xinjiang region has "markedly worsened" in recent years, according to a confidential document compiled by the German Foreign Ministry that was leaked to DW and its German media partners NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Since late 2016, there has been an "alarming increase" in repressive measures and systematic discrimination in China targeting Uighurs, as well as other Muslim minorities, according to the report.

So far, the German government has been careful when it comes to openly condemning the Chinese internment camps. German industrial giants like Siemens, along with BASF and VW, operate factories in Xinjiang.

Read more: Why is Germany silent on China's human rights abuses?

The classified report on human rights in China was compiled by the Foreign Ministry in December 2019 as an advisory document for Germany's Federal Office of Migration and Refugees, which decides on asylum claims.

It was based on information provided by human rights organizations, lawyers, Western embassies and international organizations.

'Sexual violence and deaths' in Chinese camps

The Uighur are a Turkic-speaking minority based in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. They are predominantly a Sunni Muslim community, and one of the 55 recognized ethnic minorities in China.

In its assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang, the Foreign Ministry said that more than 1 million of the roughly 10 million Uighurs living in Xinjiang are thought to have disappeared into a network of prisons and camps that Chinese authorities have been constructing since late 2016.

Leaked papers document China's Uighur policy in Xinjiang

Many are held indefinitely. Some are moved to labor camps, and others are allowed to return home under the strict supervision of local authorities, with their freedom of movement strictly curtailed.

According to the report's authors, the Chinese motto of the camps: "transformation through education," is in actuality a "euphemistic term for draconian ideological training courses."

The report also said there are reports of mistreatment, sexual violence and deaths in the internment camps. Uighurs whose relatives live abroad are put under increased surveillance and having contacts abroad can lead to internment and interrogation.

The Chinese authorities claim that the camps are vocational training centers they set up to fight "extremist ideas" and provide Uighurs with "valuable skills." Detainees are said to undergo a rigorous indoctrination process and Mandarin language courses.

Deported to China and 'disappeared'

According to the report, China is pressuring the governments of Egypt, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand to deport Uighurs back to China. There is no information about these peoples' "whereabouts," the report said.

Chinese citizens considered as being what authorities call "subversive" minorities are in danger of disappearing "indefinitely" should they be deported back to China, it continued. These groups include Uighurs and Tibetans.


The German situation report said Uighur refugees deported back to China face danger

Due to the ethnic and territorial tensions, Uighur Muslims have long faced cultural and political discrimination in China, which has led to widespread discontent and, at times, violence.

In 2009, riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, left more than 140 people dead and hundreds injured, as protesters attacked Chinese residents and burnt buses.

In 2014, a terror attack was carried out on a market in Urumqi, killing 31 people. In response, the Chinese government intensified its surveillance and control of Uighurs.

The German situation report does acknowledge possible links between Uighur separatist factions and the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda.

However, under the guise of fighting terrorism, China is seemingly punishing an entire population, targeting the Uighur language, religion and culture and placing them under a tight-knit mesh of constant electronic surveillance.

German firms defend business in China

China, the report says, has placed any Muslim — be it Uighur or other Muslim minority — under a general suspicion of supporting and spreading extremist views.

The Uighur identify themselves as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang, which they describe as "East Turkistan." Experts say that many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs feel closer to Central Asian states than China. They demand a separate homeland or at least a greater autonomy for their region.

Read more: HRW says China poses 'dire' threat to human rights

German leaders stay quiet

Although the German government is evidently aware of China's systematic violation of human rights, German leaders have been mealy-mouthed when addressing the situation publicly.

In November 2019, Chancellor Merkel told the German Parliament that Germany must "of course criticize" when hearing reports of Uighur internment camps, but she did not specify whom.

Last year, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called on China to comply with its human rights obligations and has urged Beijing to "clarify its position" on interning Muslim minorities.

In an interview with German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Maas said, "If indeed hundreds of thousands of Uighurs are being detained in camps, then the international community cannot close its eyes."

Read more: US Congress condemns China for treatment of Uighurs

The situation report also said it will be important to monitor "the growth of an authoritarian state" with a tendency towards "totalitarian structures" under the hand of President Xi Jinping.

The goal of the Communist Party's oppression of civil liberties is preserving its power domestically, along with the entrenchment of Xi Jinping's claim to leadership. This is reflected in the human rights situation in the country, the report said.

China's Uighur — what you need to know

The Chinese government has been slammed for suppressing the Uighur community in the country's western Xinjiang province. Why is Beijing targeting the Uighur? Who are they, and what are their demands? (04.12.2019) 

MY BREXIT MEME


Opinion: Little Britain drifts into insignificance

And so it's official. The UK can have its cake crumbs and eat them. The divorce proceedings with the EU have been tortuous, but they're likely to pale in comparison with what lies ahead for the UK, writes Rob Mudge.
Just over three and a half years ago, on the morning of June 23, 2016, I forced myself to forego my daily news junkie ritual of checking my constant news feed drip and traveled into work blissfully unaware at that stage of what had happened.
I had prepared two opinion pieces for the day. One for the highly unlikely event that the UK had voted to leave the EU, the other that we would — naturally — be remaining in the bloc.
I'm no friend of using these terms lightly, but I really was in a state of shock when I walked into the newsroom. My German colleagues told me later that I looked as if I'd seen a ghost.
Over the past couple of years the Brexit apparition has taken on a corporeal form. Even then I — naively as it turns out — clung to the hope that the country would come to its senses and reverse the decision. While friends and colleagues around me were applying for German citizenship, I put it off more or less until the last moment.
The empire strikes back
DW editor Rob Mudge
DW's Rob Mudge
While I fully accept the outcome of a democratic vote, I still refuse to acknowledge the process that got us here: a plot based on misconceptions, lies and disinformation. Many of those who had the wool pulled over their eyes by the solipsistic and self-serving leaders, from Brexit architect David Cameron to current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are proponents of a UK stuck in the past. The notion that a nation that once boasted an empire of colonies that it oppressed needed to rid itself of the EU's shackles is ludicrous.
Those rules and regulations so despised by government figures both past and present were shaped and formed in some form or another by the UK. And if it didn't like them, it opted out. No other EU member state has enjoyed so many exemptions and rebates.
The EU is not perfect, far from it. But to think that the UK will get a better deal with EU member states and other leading competitors is delusional. So far the UK has signed so-called continuity deals with countries such as Liechtenstein, the Faroe Islands, Georgia and Lebanon, to name but a few.
No disrespect intended, but they aren't exactly economic powerhouses. No need to panic just yet though. Former Trade Secretary Liam "the-trade-deal-with-the-EU-should-be-one-of-the-easiest-in-human-history" Fox said at the time that he had 40 deals lined up to be signed the "second" after Brexit with, er, hang on, I'm trying to find that list ...
How attractive to outside investors is a country that is hemorrhaging key industries and services as a result of Brexit? It doesn't take rocket science to figure out why leading carmakers are shutting plants and moving to mainland Europe, or why key financial operators are moving to Paris and Amsterdam. Not to mention the brain drain when EU nationals who have been working in science and education pack their bags and leave.
In vino veritas?
But fear not, there is hope. One of the government's Brexiteers living in a parallel universe is Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay. He said recently that 99% of wine consumed in the UK is imported. Once the UK leaves the EU, however, this "vital sector" would be able to thrive. I am not making this up. Two things: Has he ever paused to wonder why all that wine is imported? And since when has the UK's wine-making industry been a "vital sector?"
Let's take the level of ignorance one step further. And again, you couldn't make this up. Brexit MEP June Mummery recently had an epiphany. She tweeted that once the UK leaves the EU it will no longer have representation in Brussels on fishing policy. If irony wasn't dead already, this would be its death knell (She could always check whether Johnson has some kippers stashed away in a fridge somewhere).
Brexit will leave Britain broken, a disunited kingdom. Geographically it has always been removed from continental Europe. That distance will become increasingly palpable politically, economically and socially.
I may not be around to see it (a mixed blessing, in a way), but I predict that within the next 20 years, the UK will come begging with its tail between its legs to rejoin the EU — but the terms then will be infinitely worse than those it enjoyed for so long.
DW's Rob Mudge is a British-born journalist living in Germany who has followed Brexit developments with great trepidation.

Lufthansa avoids strike in stop-gap deal with union

The German airline has agreed to a one-time payment and longer stop overs in long-haul destinations. The two parties said strikes will be called off pending further talks.
German cabin crew trade union Ufo and Lufthansa announced on Friday that strikes would be avoided for the time being, after agreeing on dates for further talks. Cabin crew workers are seeking better pay and working conditions.
A Lufthansa spokeswoman said that the union had agreed that there would be no strikes on any of the group's airlines, which includes Eurowings and Austrian Airlines, until at least the end of the next round of negotiations.
In a joint statement, both parties said that there was an agreement to give some 22,000 cabin crew personnel a one-off payment of an extra €1,500 ($1,660) in their next paycheck. The firm is also already putting in place one of the union's demands, longer stop overs in long-haul destinations like Japan and South Korea.
Strikes in quick succession
In November and December, Lufthansa and Eurowings were forced to cancel hundreds of flights and strand thousands of passengers during three short strikes organized by Ufo.
The union is not only seeking raises for employees, but other benefits like more security for temporary workers, who are often placed into longer, more difficult routes without the security of a long-term contract.
Both cabin crew and pilots for many airlines have complained in recent years that the competition from budget airlines has led to increasingly long hours under more stressful conditions and without adequate compensation.
es/rt (dpa, Reuters)

Aston Martin rescued by Canadian billionaire Lawrence StrollCanadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll will lead a consortium hoping to pump around $650 million into the struggling sports car manufacturer. He will also use the Aston Martin name for the F1 team his son Lance drives for.



Canada's billionaire supercar enthusiast Lawrence Stroll is leading a consortium of investors which will claim a 16.7% stake in the company in return for a direct investment of 182 million pounds ($240 million, €216 million). This could rise to a 20% share upon completion of a plan for the company and the investors to raise a total of around 500 million pounds indirectly, in large part via a rights issue from existing shareholders.

Stroll will also become an executive chairman at Aston Martin as part of the takeover.

Aston Martin's shares, which had nosedived since the company's 2018 IPO, surged by almost 30% after the announcement before shedding some of those initial gains later in Friday's trading. Even after this rally, though, the stock was still trading at around one-third of the price it commanded last February. The small, British-based Aston Martin, which often buys its core components like engines and transmission systems from larger European manufacturers, had been struggling both with the economic and luxury car slowdown in China as well as with the ramifications of Brexit. The sports car specialist had sought to move into a new market by developing an SUV of its own, but is a relative latecomer to the marketplace.

Like several other car manufacturers concerned about just-in-time production chains crossing a number of borders, the company had openly warned the UK against a so-called hard Brexit. The company has changed hands multiple times over the years. It famously spent almost 20 years underneath the Ford umbrella starting in 1987, and is currently primarily owned by Italian and Kuwaiti private equity groups.


Aston Martin is perhaps best known as James Bond's carmaker of choice

Britain's mainly foreign-owned automotive sector is already feeling the heat of Brexit before the process even begins at midnight on Friday. Car production in the UK dived 14.2% to 1.3 million vehicles in 2019, the lowest annual level since 2010, figures released on Thursday showed.

Read more: Aston Martin is recreating James Bond's 'Goldfinger' DB5

Stroll to give the name to his son's F1 team

Although Lawrence Stroll made his fortune in fashion, he's been a car enthusiast and Ferrari collector for years.

His son, Lance Stroll, is a professional racing driver competing in Formula 1 for the Racing Point team (formerly known as Force India), which his father rescued from bankruptcy in 2018.

"He brings with him his experiences and access to his Formula 1 team," Aston Martin chief executive Andy Palmer told Reuters news agency. "We've talked a lot in the past few years about wanting to be clearly rooted in luxury and obviously Mr. Stroll knows an awful lot about luxury."

The Racing Point F1 Team will be renamed Aston Martin as a result of the takeover, starting in the 2021 season (all F1 team names are already formally submitted for the new season starting in March, and cannot be changed without financial ramifications).

The Red Bull team, which had a commercial partnership with Aston Martin, also announced on Friday that this would cease at the end of 2020.


Aston Martin had reportedly also been in talks with Chinese carmaker Geely prior to Friday's announcement of the Stroll-led rescue.

msh/kp (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Opposition bids to ban 'killer robots' foiled by Merkel's coalition

Opposition calls for Germany to seek an international ban on fully autonomous weapons systems have been sunk in parliament by members of Angela Merkel's coalition. The pleas came from the Greens and ex-communist Left.
March 2019: Campaign to Stop Killer Robots at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate
Coalition parties used their Bundestag majority on Friday to scupper a set of pleas from opposition parties to work towards a global ban on autonomous weaponry with no human input.
The opposition Greens had demanded that Merkel's coalition press for progress on stalled talks — via the United Nations' 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCWC) — with a view to developing a ban on "lethal autonomous weapons systems" and avoiding a potential new arms race.
Since 2014, eight meetings have been held in Geneva with no headway, largely due, says Human Rights Watch (HRW), to US and Russian insistence that definitions be first clarified. Favoring a ban via 11 guiding principles are more than 120 nations, with a follow-on conference due in 2021.
HRW's Mary Wareham, who heads the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, told DW that "unacceptable" Russian and US standpoints amounted to the superpowers not wanting "to see any legal outcome, a new treaty or protocol."
"You could program the weapon system to go out and to select and attack an entire group or category of people, which is a very dangerous proposition," said Wareham, adding that the US had already looked at "targeting military age males in Yemen."
No research funding from EU, urge Greens
In its motion, the opposition Left party had demanded that Germany itself institute a moratorium on such autonomous weapons development, coupled with a push for an international ban.
The Greens, in another defeated motion, had also demanded that Germany seek an amendment to the European Defense Fund, created by the EU in 2017, to block EU research spending on such weapons.
That motion was also rejected in parliament by Merkel's coalition, which had said it did not want such weaponry in its so-called "coalition contract" of 2018, a document setting out the parties' combined plans for this period of government. 
Loophole for artificial intelligence
In committee stages, Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) said they wanted existing international law upheld but were "open to the use of artificial intelligence, also in the military area."
Her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), parliament was told, wanted lethal autonomous weapons prohibited but warned against "too hasty" decisions. 
Instead, the SPD preferred a public hearing on what are often euphemistically called "killer robots" in Germany. Critics say German arms manufacturers have been hawking new weapons with autonomous functions at defense sales expos.  
Kyiv, 2016: Ukrainian-made combat robot 'Piranya' at defense trade fair
Greens parliamentarian Katja Keul told parliament in Berlin Friday that since 2016 a government expert group had merely mulled over "whether" and "how" to regulate such weapons.
Through automation, out of direct control by soldiers, said Keul, lethal capability would be put "in the hands of private IT companies."
It violated human dignity as a basic right when a human life became merely the "object" of a machine-based decision, said Keul.
Deutschland Berlin Bundestag Katja Keul (picture-alliance/dpa/B. von Jutrczenka)
Coalition of the willing is needed, says Keul
"What a horrific vision, machines killing people en masse, without resistance, self-determined and efficient," said Left parliamentarian Kathrin Vogler, adding that this scenario was becoming a "very concrete" prospect. She called on Merkel's coalition to ensure that a European Parliament resolution on abolishing automated weapons systems "be implemented."
'Sober' scrutiny, says coalition
Christian Schmidt, speaking for Merkel's CDU-CSU parliamentary group, referred to Germany's past experience of the 1970s when former East Germany used automated devices to shoot Germans trying to flee to the West.
"Those were offensive weapons of the NVA, the border troops of the GDR [East Germany]," said Schmidt, who also referred to World War One mechanized warfare and insisted that modern weaponry required "sober" scrutiny via a "different, stronger ethos."
"Offensive weapon systems [are] what we don't want whatsoever," said Schmidt, a former state secretary in Germany's Defense Ministry.
Analysts say military robots are no longer confined to science fiction but are fast emerging from design desks to development in engineering laboratories and could be ready for deployment within a few years. Semiautomated weaponry, most notably aerial drones, has already become a core component in modern militaries — but still with a human operator in control remotely.

German arms exports shoot to record high, Hungary biggest buyer

Three years of falling weapons and military hardware exports have gone into reverse, reaching almost €8 billion in 2019. The figures have been criticized as proving that controls on weapons deliveries are not working
German arms exports rose 65% from January to mid-December 2019 compared to 2018 and hit a record of €7.95 billion ($8.8 billion), according to Economy Ministry figures. Politicians from the socialist Left Party and the Greens requested the data, which has been seen by DW.
The documents showed that two of Germany's top 10 arms export customers, Egypt at number two and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at number nine, were active participants in the war in Yemen, in spite of government assurances that Germany would no longer arm those countries. 
The figures show government-approved exports of weapons, vehicles, and warships beat the previous record in 2015, which was followed by three consecutive years of drops in the value of exports.
Germany's total export licenses had already exceeded last year's total of €5.3 billion by the middle of the year, the figures revealed.
"These sizable figures show that the entire export control system is simply not working," Left party Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen, who filed one of the information requests, said in a statement. "We need clear legal bans on arms exports."

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