They only want the best for their country: Assad supporter in Damascus (left), regime opponent outside the Syrian embassy in London.

Regime change in Syria would have unforeseeable consequences – By Michael Lüders

The Syrian leadership’s treatment of its own people is inhumane and playing havoc with the economic and social foundations of the country. Nevertheless, President Bashar al-Assad retains a relatively firm grip on power.

This is primarily because neither Russia nor China will allow the Damascus regime to collapse. Next to Iran, Syria is their most important ally in the region. It would not be opportune for Moscow and Beijing if the West, and in particular the USA and Israel, consolidated their dominant position in the Middle East. Assad knows this, and that knowledge is keeping him in power. The second reason Assad remains in power is the complexity of his country.

Big investors are crowding into agriculture and land – By Wolfgang Mulke

It was a small but heartening victory for Foodwatch, a German consumer advocacy group, in its fight against speculation on agricultural commodities. In April, the Deka investment fund unit of Germany’s state-affiliated banks announced it was pulling out of the controversial segment. “We have decided to stop listing the price development of basic foodstuffs such as wheat, soy and livestock,” Deka’s statement said.

Earlier, Deutsche Bank likewise yielded to public pressure. Germany’s biggest bank said it would reevaluate its activities in the sensitive trade of food and refrain from opening any new funds that include agricultural investments during that time.

Germans have not forgotten the past, but some of them find dealing with it difficult: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin.

The debate over Günter Grass’ poem again lays bare Germans’ troubled relationship with Israel, Jews and their own history – By Peter H. Koepf

He wanted to remain silent no longer, he wrote, and that he was weary of the “West’s hypocrisy.” Germany, itself burdened by history, could not be permitted to become a “subcontractor for a crime.” Thus spoke Günter Grass. The nuclear arms power Israel threatens world peace and wants to exterminate the Iranian nation. Because Germany is to deliver another submarine to an Israel “specialized in directing all-obliterating warheads toward an area in which not a single atom bomb has been proven to exist,” the Nobel Literature laureate (The Tin Drum) felt compelled to say “what must be said.”