Filed under: Germany, Politics, Security & Defence, all | Tags: Germany, Politics, Afghanistan, Defence
Berlin (dpa) – Almost three months after the deadly NATO airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed as many as 142 people, the event claimed its third political victim in Germany on Friday.
The then-German defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, resigned his current post as labour minister Friday after a newspaper report was published suggesting he lied to the public about civilian casualties in the attack.
This came 24 hours after the army‘s top officer, General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and a defence ministry official also quit.
On September 4, Georg Klein, a German colonel in charge of the Kunduz Provincial Recontruction Team (a joint civilian- military effort) called for a US air-force strike on two oil tankers that had been hijacked by Afghan militants.
In the ensuing fireball, dozens of militants and bystanders -probably villagers opportunistically taking fuel from the trucks -were killed.
In Germany, the incident smouldered slowly for twelve weeks, butthen exploded Thursday, when video evidence and documents emerged showing that the army immediately knew there had been innocent victims, and had passed that knowledge up the chain of command.
Filed under: Germany, Politics, Security & Defence | Tags: Germany, Politics, Afghanistan, Merkel
Berlin (dpa) – The most serious political crisis in the four-year tenure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel engulfed Berlin Friday, following allegations of government dishonesty over a botched Afghan airstrike.
Former defence minister Franz Josef Jung became the latest top official to step down, giving up his job as labour minister, after a newspaper report said he had misled the public while in charge of the defence ministry about civilian casualties in the September 4 strike in Kunduz.
The resignation of Jung, 60, a member of Merkel‘s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is the latest setback for the newly formed centre-right coalition, which has been beset by internal disagreements since it took office less than one month ago.
“I take the political responsibility for the internal information policy in the defence ministry” Jung told reporters in Berlin.
The report by the Bild newspaper which appeared Thursday, claimed that the German military had passed information up the chain of command which detailed civilian casualties on the same day as the attack ocurred.
However in the days after the airstrike Jung maintained that “to the best of my knowledge, there were only terrorist Taliban killed.”
(more…)
Filed under: Culture, Europe, Germany, all | Tags: 1989, Berlin Wall, Communism, Germany
Berlin – It threatened to be a complete wash-out, a testament to the fact that you cannot live the same revolution twice.
But in the end, Berlin celebrated 20 years since the fall of the wall on Monday – amid freezing drizzle and under a sea of umbrellas – in its characteristic hardy spirit, with moments that brought many to tears.
The Festival of Freedom started with the heads of state or government from every European Union state, the United States and Russia in attendance, and ended with a fireworks display over the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s symbol in good times and bad.
The proceedings began with a whimper rather than a bang. A classical concert, despite being conducted by the beloved Daniel Barenboim, failed to warm up an already soggy crowd.
The Israeli-Argentinian conductor led a programme that began honourably with a serious tribute to the wealth of German musical and poetic culture: A prelude from Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. But it wasn’t exactly a singalong moment, and the crowd’s mood dampened further when A Survivor From Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg followed.
The piece is a sung narration of the horrors of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered millions of Jews during World War II.
‘This just doesn’t fit,’ complained one woman in the audience. ‘This should have been a day when we as Germans could celebrate for once without a bad conscience!’
Others couldn’t understand why a supposedly popular event was dominated by classical music – and some pretty serious music at that.
But the mood began to improve, helped along by images on the big screens set up on both sides of the Brandenburg Gate, which at one point displayed US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton nodding along to the exuberant strains of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
The frantic finale to the symphony was written in 1812, as Europe was being bludgeoned by the Napoleonic wars. Beethoven himself was wracked by unrequited love, and was nearing total deafness. And yet, joy came out of adversity – a fitting thought to remember the end of Germany’s awful 20th century by.
Filed under: Economy, Europe, all | Tags: Business, Germany, GM, Labour, Opel, US
Berlin – From the point of view of the German autoworker, the devil you know isn’t necessarily better than the devil you don’t.
On Thursday, more than 10,000 Opel employees turned out to express their displeasure at the decision of General Motors, Opel’s US parent, to keep their company, instead of selling it to the Magna- Sberbank consortium.
That deal had been the subject of months of torturous wrangling, with the jobs of tens of thousands of workers at stake. Now, it is in the bin.
To get an idea of the emotions that the fate of Opel arouses amongst its staff, witness the now-ubiquitous T-shirts worn by workers when on demonstration duty: ‘We Are Opel’, the slogan goes – a clear if somewhat overblown reference to the popular refrain during the last days of the East German dictatorship, We Are The People.
Now, Opel workers are back in the arms of GM, which has arisen like Lazarus from bankruptcy, and is suddenly feeling optimistic about the prospects for the automotive industry post financial crisis.
On the whole, they are not happy in Detroit’s familiar embrace.
