A miscellany of coverage explaining why Germany & its image is in the news
international |
politics / elections |
other press 
Monday September 07, 2009 23:02
by scorchio - ( iosaf mac d. )
Anyone contemplating voting No! for the first time in the upcoming Lisbon 2 referendum in Ireland really ought know the name of the candidates to be the first president of the EU. After all it's not a completely done thing that once the Irish get their answer "right", Tony Blair will sweep into the history books. The current chancillor of Germany, Angela Merckel is another leading candidate as are former prime ministers of Sweden and Luxembourg......"anyway"....... Germany is in the news globally at the moment for several reasons. First the fact that last Friday its army ordered an attack by the USAF on a fuel tanker in Afghanistan which resulted in the deaths of over 80 civilians. Second because it is running into elections. Third because its AIDS awareness people have presented a publicity image of Hitler shagging a girlie from behind with the caption "AIDS is a mass murderer". Here follows a miscellany of links in English so you can keep abreast.
First the Afghanistan thingy is of course not the first placement of the Germany military outside of the frontiers of that state since they were established along with lots of other bother in the years following the second world war. Of course those borders were to change one last time when the wall came down in Berlin and Germany was united in its present form. It's first decision as a unified state was to recognise the independence of Croatia on the 5th of October 1990. A recognition which many believe sparked the Balkans war. But almost 60% of the former republic of Yugoslavia are now in the EU and at least 3 of the 7 most wanted war criminals have been apprehended. Germany was to wait a little bit longer to see its defense forces the "Bundeswehr" stationed abroad, overseas, over there or far away.
Finally a war on Israel's nebulous frontiers was to break with more than 60 years of reticence on not only the part of Berlin but also many other states of the EU to see the German armed forces on active duty in Lebanon. As reported by Daniel Vernet in the French Le Monde of that period exactly 3 years ago, the invitation to the Germans and Berlin's acceptance of same was the breaking of "One of the last taboos in Germany foreign policy, a legacy of its national socialist past, is on the verge of vanishing. Troops from the Bundeswehr could well soon be sent to the Middle East as part of the United Nations force in Lebanon . By which I suppose they meant something a wee bit more relict on the taboo scale than thew NPD winning seats or opening squats.
Once that particular taboo had been broken and the "Bundeswehr" had earned splendid citations and praise for its tour of duty in the middle East, its role in the ISAF deployment in Afghanistan was doubtlessly going to increase. After all the UN resolutions which created ISAF had been adopted after the Bonn Conference held in the then German capital. Bonn it seems was to enjoy less than sixty years as a capital......anyway.......
let's proceed with the miscellany of coverage
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"Germany Pledges Full Probe as Pressure Mounts on Defense Minister" (& this is today)
"The German government has promised a full investigation into the air raid in Afghanistan last Friday amid reports that many of the casualties were Afghan civilians. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung is under pressure and the mission, deeply unpopular in Germany, is starting to dominate the election campaign.
German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung conceded on Monday that civilians were killed in the air strike the German army ordered in the early hours of last Friday on two hijacked fuel tankers in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan.
Jung, who had insisted on Sunday that just over 50 Taliban insurgents had been killed in the attack and that no civilians had been among them, said in a television interview on Monday that it seemed clear to him that Taliban had made up "the predominant share" of victims."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,647398....html
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Afghan Provincial Governor Praises German Army
The German army has been inundated with international criticism for ordering an air strike on two hijacked fuel tankers in Afghanistan. But the governor of Kunduz province where the attack happened has now praised the German forces. "They made the right decision at the right time," Mohammed Omar told SPIEGEL.
The governor of the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, Mohammed Omar, praised the German army on Monday for ordering an air strike on two hijacked fuel tankers last Friday despite strong international criticism of the attack which is believed to have killed civilians as well as Taliban fighters.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,647494....html
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'Allies Can't Conceal Schadenfreude' at Botched Air Strike
((this article uses a German word in its English translation just to prove that well-educated folk can recognise a word of two of the language without too much angst))
Germany, which has often condemned US military operations in Afghanistan that led to civilian deaths, is now on the receiving end of international criticism following Friday's air strike. The criticism seems justified, write German media commentators, but they add that internal disputes within NATO can only help the Taliban.
The air strike the German army ordered on two hijacked fuel tankers stuck in a river bed in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan in the early hours of last Friday appears to have claimed considerable civilian casualties and has led to criticism from Germany's NATO allies in Afghanistan. It has also put the German government, and especially Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, under pressure, and has placed the unpopular Afghan mission at the forefront of the German election campaign ahead of the Sept. 27 vote.
There's an element of Schadenfreude in the criticism of Germany from its allies, write German media commentators. Germany, whose troops are based mainly in the less dangerous north of Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency has been less powerful and deadly than in the south, has consistently lectured its NATO allies about how to conduct the campaign and criticized them whenever military operations resulted in civilian casualties. So it's not surprising that they are now on the receiving end of criticism following an attack that the Washington Post reports claimed 125 lives, including at least two dozen people who were not Taliban insurgents.
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frame it & wait until its owners die & you can auction it.
Thus it ought not be surprising that though the Germans swear on oath they only called in the USAF after studying the site via live satellite imagery, which would be a bit like google-earth but higher resolution, they haven't told us which agency of the US umbrella of military, {[on site : ISAF or its other Afghan bag] [parallel to site : Pentagon or CIA, NSA or NGA]} actually gave them their pics. Despite it seems the fact that the cross hairs were never in their hands before their eyes, it seems they get all the blame.
(all the blame aint always all the guilt)
The USA are quite happy to blame the Germans & I daresay many more people are too. IF Angela Merckel is to properly run for President of the EU it would be preferable should she give up the prime minister job in Berlin and leave her wondrous past of liberal democratic pact making behind her. For no doubt, many readers are too young to remember how Merckel led her "right wing" party into a grand coalition with the "left wing" SPD, because quite though voters for either party had voted for a left or right wing option to which coalition with the main rival was unthinkable, neither the SPD or Merckel's lot wanted to run coalitions with the only shares of the German vote which had increased. I'd be referring to those who abstained and didn't vote, those who voted "far left" and those who voted "far right"...........anyway......... the government always wins elections but not referenda.
all the blame aint always all the guilt.
Our last theme is the shocking AIDS advert things with Hitler on them which have the global commercial and state media complex in a tingle........."über unglaublich" as they'd say in Lichtenstein if enough could fit.
German Aids ad causes controversy over images of Hitler and Stalin 'Das Comitee' ad shows a poster of the 'Aids is a mass murderer' campaign featuring Adolf Hitler The ad is due to run until World Aids Day on December 1. The creators of an Aids awareness advertisement that shows a woman having sex with a series of dictators, including Hitler and Stalin, defended it today, amid growing criticism. Das Comitee, a Hamburg advertising agency, said the advert's shock value was aimed at highlighting the dangers of unprotected sex at a time when public awareness about the risks was diminishing. "We knew the face we gave to the illness could not be a pretty one," said Dirk Silz, the creative director.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/07/germany-aid...talin