Tag: Germany

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Greek, French and German voters went to the polls this past weekend and rejected pretty much told the European leaders they were very unhappy with the austerity measures that were being forced on them to bail out European banks. It took until yesterday for the world markets to react to this new reality with the Dow closing below its inflated 13,000 mark. Germany, the chief cheerleader for austerity, is not happy with France and very displeased with the new Greek leadership that blithely told Germany what to do with its austerity measures:

Alexis Tsipras, whose bloc came second in Sunday’s vote, said Greek voters had “clearly nullified the loan agreement”. [..]

The European Commission and Germany say countries must stick to budget cuts.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday: “What member states have to do is be consistent, implementing the policies that they have agreed.”  [..]

Mr Tsipras made his position clear to reporters in a five-point plan:

 

• Cancelling the bailout terms, notably laws that further cut wages and pensions
• Scrapping laws that abolish workers rights, particularly a law abolishing collective labour agreements due to come into effect on 15 May
• Promoting changes to deepen democracy and social justice
• Investigating Greece’s banking system which received almost 200bn euros of public money
• Setting up an international committee to find out the causes of Greece’s public deficit and putting on hold all debt servicing

It looks increasingly like the Greeks will be abandoning the Euro, it’s just a matter of when:

“Germans are now predominantly of the opinion that they would be better off if Greece left the euro zone,” said Carsten Hefeker, a professor of economics and an expert on the euro at the University of Siegen. “If the country really is continuing on the path they are taking now, it would be hard to justify keeping them in. How do you deal with a country that says we don’t want to keep any of the commitments we have made?” [..]

Perhaps the one card Greece has to play is the danger its exit could pose to other, much larger members like Spain and Italy, with far greater consequences. If Greece were pushed out, Mr. Hefeker said, the bond markets would start betting on the next country to be kicked out. “Then Spain or Italy would be put under pressure, and the danger would be of the whole euro zone collapsing,” he said.

There are few options are open for the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund which is holding most of Greece’s debt and easing the threat to the banks.

First, the so-called “troika” could release just enough funds to keep the government running until the political situation stabilizes;

The terms of the agreement could be renegotiated with the creditors:

Or, lastly, the “troika” could just refuse to give Greece any money, as the IMF did over 10 years ago when Argentina faced similar economic crisis. This actually turned out well for Argentina over a shorter recovery than is predicted for Greece under the current terms.

Perhaps it is past time for Greece to go it on its own and let the Eu continue the blood letting without them.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

“Europe is watching us, I am sure that when the result was announced, in many European countries there was relief, hope and the notion that finally austerity can no longer be the only option.

“And this is the mission that is now mine — to give the European project a dimension of growth, employment, prosperity, in short, a future. This is what I will say as soon as possible to our European partners and first of all to Germany, in the name of the friendship that links us and in the name of our shared responsibility.”

“We are not just any country on the planet, just any nation in the world, we are France.”

~François Hollande, President-elect of France~

François Hollande is the new President of France defeating Nicholas Sarkozy. With half the votes counted, M. Hollande won a narrow victory with 50.8% to Sarkozy’s 49.2%, as per the French Interior minister. According to exit polls, the vote is closer to 52% for M. Hollande.

Crowds roared at the center-left candidate’s campaign headquarters as the exit poll results came out Sunday evening.

“Many people have been waiting for this moment for many long years. Others, younger, have never known such a time. … I am proud to be capable to bring about hope again,” Hollande said in his victory speech.

Celebratory car horns blared along the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

“It’s a great night, full of joy for so many young people all across the country,” said Thierry Marchal-Beck, president of the Movement of Young Socialists.

Hollande will be the nation’s first left-wing president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995.

His victory and the elections in Greece and Germany are sending economic shock waves through Europe:

François Hollande’s election threw down the gauntlet to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who has railroaded the eurozone into agreeing a new “fiskalpakt” treaty enshrining Germany’s austerity doctrine.

The economic doctrine of austerity, to cut the burden of state spending to free up the economy, has ruled supreme with the support all of Europe’s leaders, the European Union and financial markets.

But political leaders were on Sunday night conceding the consensus had been shattered beyond repair.

With Europe’s economies plunging further into recession and as unemployment in the eurozone breaks record levels, voters demands for a new approach had finally become to great to ignore.

The popular backlash to EU imposed austerity to the centrist New Democracy and Socialist parties in Greece threatens the existence of the euro itself.

While in Germany, Chancellor Merkel was sent a message from German voters:

Exit polls by German broadcaster ARD put Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats at 30.5 per cent, just one per cent more than the left-wing Social Democrats.

But the Free Democrats, Mrs Merkel’s ailing coalition ally, scored a lowly 8.5 per cent, meaning that the coalition that has ruled the rural state on the Danish border since 2009 faces the prospect of being unseated.

Experts predict that the Social Democrats will try to cobble a coalition together with the Greens, the third biggest party, in order to take control of the state. [..]

While the Free Democrats appears to have avoided the humiliation of being wiped out all together in Schleswig-Holstein the continuing unpopularity of the party could force Mrs Merkel to search for a new coalition partner come next year’s federal elections.

I don’t think this is a surprise to most Europeans. It should be a clear message to the leaders of countries who are considering only austerity measures as a solution to debt.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The French Presidential election will take place this Sunday, May 6. Meanwhile, the campaigning has ended Friday evening with the Socialist challenger, François Hollande, still predicted to defeat current President Nicholas Sarkozy:

The last Ipsos poll for French television and Le Monde puts Hollande on 52.5% with Sarkozy closing the gap but still behind on 47.5%. The poll was taken before the dramatic decision by centrist François Bayrou to throw his weight behind Hollande in the second round.

The vast majority of voters appear to have made up their minds, with 92% saying they know who they will vote for, and 82% saying they will definitely turn out.

Many are seeing this as not just a referendum about Sarkoszy’s “hyperactive” style but the start of a revolt against austerity which many now believe has slowed the recovery from the recession. Wolfgang Münchau wrote in the Financial Times that Hollande is start of progressive insurrection:

Nicolas Sarkozy does not look like a president, talk like a president, or act like a president. But there is a better reason why he deserves to be ejected. He won the 2007 campaign with a promise of ambitious economic reforms. He was one of the few European politicians with a mandate for big changes. He flunked it for a reason that already became apparent during the 2007 campaign: he was hyperactive. Reforms are for boring politicians. [..]

The main reason why I look forward to a Hollande presidency is for its impact on Europe. At present, all the large, and many of the small, eurozone countries are governed by centre-right governments. Angela Merkel is their undisputed queen. Mr Hollande is not going to be a comfortable partner. On some issues, such as the fiscal pact, he will challenge her outright.

I would welcome a Hollande presidency on the grounds that it would introduce a much needed shift in the toxic narrative about the eurozone crisis and its resolution. According to this narrative, the crisis was caused by fiscal irresponsibility. Its prescription is austerity and economic reforms. The tool to achieve the former is the fiscal pact, which Mr Hollande has said he will not sign unless it is complemented by policies to boost economic growth.

I wish that Mr Hollande would go further because austerity will snare countries in a low-growth trap. No set of structural policies will change this. I understand the political reason why he does not want to go further. He does not want his presidency to start with an existential fight with Germany – and the dreaded prospect of another panic attack by global investors.

While, as Paul Krugman as noted, the prospect of a Hollande presidency has generated some “hysteria” in the financial world:

Today’s FT is all Hollande, all the time. Some of it is sensible; some of it is like, well, this piece by Josef Joffe, which declares that Hollande’s likely victory is “a bleak prospect for all but new Keynesians and old socialists.” [..]

Joffe is, however, useful as a guide to the German view, which is basically that we got ourselves competitive and restored growth, so why can’t everyone else. Somehow he never mentions that Germany’s recovery in the 2000s was driven by a huge move into trade surplus; is everyone supposed to do the same thing, all at once? What’s the Germany for “fallacy of composition”?

The voting ends at 8 PM Paris time and the results will be reported here Sunday afternoon around 2 PM EDT.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. It then must follow that Germany’s Chancellor, Andrea Merkel has got to be insane.

Eurozone in new crisis as ratings agency downgrades nine countries

Standard & Poor’s strips France of its AAA credit rating, rekindling fears in the markets over future of single currency

S&P said austerity was driving Europe even deeper into financial crisis as it also cut Austria’s triple-A rating, and relegated Portugal and Cyprus to junk status.

The humiliating loss of France’s top-rated status leaves Germany as the only other major economy inside the eurozone with a AAA rating, and rekindled financial market anxiety about a possible break-up of the single currency.

S&P brought an abrupt end to the uneasy calm that has existed in the eurozone since the turn of the year by downgrading the ratings of Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches. Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were all cut by one notch.

The agency said that its actions on eurozone ratings were “primarily driven by insufficient policy measures by EU leaders to fully address systemic stresses”. It added that fiscal austerity alone “risks becoming self-defeating“.

Germany,too may be facing a downgrade as it slips into recession as its economy is contracting in the face of the deflationary economic policy of the euro zone. So what does Frau Merkel do? You got it, more austerity.

Merkel: Europe Faces ‘Long Road’ to Win Back Trust

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Standard and Poor’s downgrades of nine countries underline the fact that the eurozone faces a “long road” to win back investors’ confidence, pushing Saturday for it to move quickly on a new budget discipline pact and a permanent rescue fund.

I agree with Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog that the ratings agencies should be rendered useless considering their part in the current economic crisis but they are right about austerity. The Europeans led by Merkel are ignoring reality.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The current policy of austerity that is being forced on the European Union by Germany and England has been called “financially futile, economically erroneous, politically puzzling and socially irresponsible” by economists and monetary experts. Author and derivatives expert, Satyajit Das, writes in the first part of his series on “The Road to Nowhere, Part 1 – Fiscal Bondage” at naked capitalism that the December 2011 European summit to resolve the euro crisis was a failure:

The proposed plan is fundamentally flawed. It made no attempt to tackle the real issues – the level of debt, how to reduce it, how to meet funding requirements or how to restore growth. Most importantly there were no new funds committed to the exercise.[..]

The plan may result in a further slowdown in growth in Europe, worsening public finances and increasing pressure on credit ratings. This is precisely the experience of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Britain as they have tried to reduce budget deficits through austerity programs. This would make the existing debt burden even harder to sustain. The rigidity of the rules also limits government policy flexibility, risking making economic downturns worse.[..]

The fiscal compact did not countenance any writedowns in existing debt. It also did not commit any new funding to support the beleaguered European periphery. Germany specifically ruled out the prospect of jointly and severally guaranteed Euro-Zone bonds. Instead, there were vague platitudes about working towards further fiscal integration.[..]

Instead of dealing with the financial problems of the central bailout mechanism (the EFSF – European Financial Stability Fund), European leaders chose the re-branding option.

Actions, or rather inactions, have consequences.

As I predicted in a message to Credit Writedowns Pro subscribers on Monday, statistics have shown that the German economy has finally succumbed to the deflationary economic policy of the euro zone.

   Germany showed first signs of feeling the pain from the euro zone’s debt crisis as the economy shrank in the last three month of 2011, despite outperforming its peers for main part of the year thanks to strong domestic demand and exports.

   Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 3.0 percent in 2011, preliminary Federal Statistics Office data showed on Wednesday, below the previous year’s growth rate of 3.7 percent – the fastest since reunification – and in line with a Reuters poll estimate.

   But GDP contracted by around 0.25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, an official from the Statistics Office added.

   “Germany cannot isolate itself so easily from tensions within the euro zone. In addition the export sector is facing a difficult period given the fall in global demand,” said Joerg Zeuner, chief economist at VP Bank.

Harrison wrote in November in the New York Times

that Europe is already in a double-dip recession. Already two months ago, the Markit Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index, which measures activity across Europe in services and manufacturing, had fallen to 50.4, the lowest since September 2009. The divider between expansion and contraction is 50, so Europe was still expanding. But last Wednesday, Markit data indicated that the situation has since deteriorated; the latest data showed a drop in private sector activity in the euro zone for the first time since July 2009. Moreover, the data are poor in the core of the euro zone as well as in the periphery, with Germany and France’s economies stalling as well. The sovereign debt crisis and the fiscal consolidation implemented to deal with it have taken their toll.[..]

Until the banks take substantially more credit write-downs and recapitalize, this crisis will continue and get worse.

The downward spiral is evident throughout Europe with even the strong German economy feeling the effects of erroneous policies

The German economy expanded faster than any other Group of 7 nation last year, official data showed Wednesday, but the stress of the euro crisis and a slowing global economy appear to be already weighing on output.

Germany expanded by 3 percent last year from 2010, the Federal Statistical Office said in Wiesbaden. It noted, however, that the growth came mostly in the first half of 2011, and estimated that the economy actually contracted by about 0.25 percent in the fourth quarter from the prior three months.

Some economists now predict another contraction for Germany in the first three months of 2012, which would meet the usual definition of a recession as two consecutive quarterly declines in output.

And austerity measures in Greece are making their budget deficits even worse:

Greece’s budget deficit widened last year as an austerity-fuelled recession cancelled out much of the extra revenues the government was hoping to raise through emergency taxes, data showed on Thursday. The central government budget gap widened 0.8 percent year-on-year to 21.64 billion euros ($27.45 billion) last year, according to figures from the finance ministry.

David Dayen at FDL News Desk thinks it is probably worse since “the EU uses a different measure to assess the Greek budget.”  He points out that even with increased taxes, the fall in tax compliance from an already lax system has reduced income. It all looks good on paper but that’s not the reality of what is actually in the treasury.

There is some hope that Europe’s leader are waking up to reality that there needs to be a growth strategy, although it may not be enough, or soon enough, to reverse the spiral.

It is a crisis in the € zone. The divergent trends in the € zone are too large. It is not an “optimum currency area”

It’s not just government, to “sovereign debt” but also excesses in the financial sector, real estate etc.

We must do everything to avoid recession. … We need a fiscal strategy that is “growth friendly”

Fiscal consolidation will not tell us to say “no” to all or which is cut everywhere. We must “prioritize”

We ask each member state to establish a “job plan”, we make commitments we can evaluate

The next meeting of the Eurozone member is the end of this month where a tax on financial transactions will be considered and, hopefully, they will discuss job creation and debt reduction.

  Too often commentary on the European debt crisis has been like handicapping a horse race (“this country is leading the race to default, but this other nation is catching”).

  While interesting, it is useless in trying to figure out how this relates to the average person.

 The first thing you have to understand is who the players are and how they are connected.

   The next big shock to the world’s financial system could happen as soon as Monday morning.

  How do I know this? Because the world’s financial leaders are expecting something really bad, and have publicly announced their intentions of preventing the consequences of something that they have proven unable to fix.

 It started on Friday, when Germany gave up on Greece.

 Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is preparing plans to shore up German banks in the event that Greece fails to meet the terms of its aid package and defaults, three coalition officials said…

  Greece is “on a knife’s edge,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told lawmakers at a closed-door meeting in Berlin on Sept. 7, a report in parliament’s bulletin showed yesterday. If the government can’t meet the aid terms, “it’s up to Greece to figure out how to get financing without the euro zone’s help,” he later said in a speech to parliament.

 When it comes to unofficial leaks like this, I tend to fall back on the wisdom of Otto von Bismarck when he said, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”

 Then, right on cue, both Greece and Germany officially denied it. Thus making it true.

 What is really scary is the two developments that immediately followed this news.

 The G7 stepped up and promised their support in defending the financial status quo.

 Central Banks stand ready to provide liquidity to banks as required. We will take all necessary actions to ensure the resilience of banking systems and financial markets.…

  Excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability. We will consult closely in regard to actions in exchange markets and will cooperate as appropriate.

 Why would they bother to announce this unless they suspected that people questioned either their resolve, or their ability?

 To conclude all these official declarations that “there is nothing to worry about” and “everything is under control”, the IMF also promised to step in if necessary.

 The International Monetary Fund will likely re-activate a $580 billion resource pool in coming weeks to ensure it has funds to help cover Europe’s worsening sovereign-debt crisis, according to several people close to the matter….

  According to the IMF, the pool of supplementary resources are only to be activated when “needed to forestall or cope with a threat to the international monetary system.”

 The IMF has been beefing up this fund since shortly before the European debt crisis reached this new crisis level. It’s almost as if they knew something like this was inevitable.

  The problem is that politics often works more slowly than bankers.

 The board of governors agreed in December to roughly double quotas from around $375 billion to around $750 billion. But out of the 187 member countries, only 17 have legally accepted the increase, including Japan, the U.K. and Korea. Most of the countries with the biggest quotas, such as the U.S., China and Germany, haven’t yet gone through the legal process, such as parliamentary or congressional approval, need to hand over their promised dues.

 While the American media focuses on opening week of football, handicapping the presidential race, celebrity gossip, reality TV, or talking about the latest electronic gadget, the financial markets are preparing for crisis in ways that we haven’t seen since early 2008.

  If the worst happens, the American public will be caught by surprise again because the news media failed us yet again.

Cross Posted from The Stars hollow Gazette

The robust economy of Germany is starting to feel the effects of the economic crisis of its partner nations in the Eurozone and is showing signs of drastic slowing

Growth in the German economy slowed sharply between April and June and was weaker at the start of the year than previously thought, figures show.

The (German) economy grew by just 0.1% in the quarter, according to figures from the national statistics office. Growth in the eurozone as a whole also slowed.

Germany had been driving the economic recovery in the eurozone.

The figures come as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy begin crunch talks.

The two leaders are discussing ways to solve the eurozone debt crisis that has threatened to engulf Italy and Spain and has sparked turmoil on global stock markets.

Figures also released on Tuesday showed that eurozone economic growth slowed to 0.2% in the second quarter, down from 0.8% in the previous three months.

The slow down has had its effect on markets in Europe and early trading in the US:

The news led European indexes lower. Germany’s DAX fell 2.6 percent, the FTSE in Britain was 1.3 percent lower, and in France the CAC 40 was down 1.9 percent.

In early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 80.68 points, or 0.70 percent, at 11,402.22. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 11.02 points, or 0.91 percent, at 1,193.47, and the Nasdaq composite index was down 26.38 points, or 1.03 percent, at 2,528.82.

“German G.D.P. data is the catalyst this morning that got us off to a bad start,” said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vt.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France were to meet later Tuesday to discuss measures to contain Europe’s fiscal crisis. A joint news conference was scheduled at noon E.D.T.

Another component of the down turn is the idea of issuing bonds backed by all Eurozone nations to ease the crisis has been poo-pooed by both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy but they may have no other choice:

The euro bond concept is gaining traction among economists and other outside experts like George Soros, the billionaire investor, as a way of preventing borrowing costs for Italy and Spain from rising so much that the countries become insolvent, an event that could destroy the common currency.

Debt issued and backed by all 17 members of the euro zone, euro bond proponents say, would be regarded as ultrasafe by investors and could rival the market for United States Treasury securities. The weaker euro members would benefit from the good standing of countries like Germany or Finland and pay lower interest rates to borrow than if left to face investors on their own.

“It may well be in order to calm markets right now,” said Jakob von Weizsäcker, an economist for the German state of Thuringia who has proposed a way to structure euro bonds so that countries would be encouraged to reduce their debt.

On the “bright side”, there is Nouriel Roubini:

.Karl Marx was right that globalization, financial intermediation, and income redistribution could lead capitalism to self-destruct

Now a combination of high oil and commodity prices, turmoil in the Middle East, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, eurozone debt crises, and America’s fiscal problems (and now its rating downgrade) have led to a massive increase in risk aversion. Economically, the United States, the eurozone, the United Kingdom, and Japan are all idling. Even fast-growing emerging markets (China, emerging Asia, and Latin America), and export-oriented economies that rely on these markets (Germany and resource-rich Australia), are experiencing sharp slowdowns.

Until last year, policymakers could always produce a new rabbit from their hat to reflate asset prices and trigger economic recovery. Fiscal stimulus, near-zero interest rates, two rounds of “quantitative easing,” ring-fencing of bad debt, and trillions of dollars in bailouts and liquidity provision for banks and financial institutions-officials tried them all. Now they have run out of rabbits.

Fiscal policy currently is a drag on economic growth in both the eurozone and the United Kingdom. Even in the United States, state and local governments, and now the federal government, are cutting expenditure and reducing transfer payments. Soon enough, they will be raising taxes.

Berkeley, CA

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

(DDT) The moderator of the world’s best known blog for policing impure political thoughts, [redacted], today finally banned the wife of the world’s most famous retired politician for promoting and distributing an unproven Conspiracy Theory.  

In a move sure to create controversy in [redacted] and other sites around the blogosphere, an anonymous, off the record spokesperson for [redacted] confirmed that

The FAQ says no conspiracy theories, no exceptions. Certainly this poster was aware of the rule, he or she chose to ignore it, and we decided to ban this person immediately. Any other remaining posters using this website, caught uprating other users who uprated the banned user, will be warned once and their posting ability suspended for the next 2,666 years until a bipartisan tribunal can be assembled to judge the purity of their thoughts and the intent of their actions.

Anyone caught discussing  this particular conspiracy theory in any diary, comment, or cat picture with caption, on this website, or any other website we had a FPer, administrator, or grandma click on deliberately or accidentally in the past 48 hours, or the next century, will also be warned once and then banned.  

Extraordinary claims, such as being made by this poster,  require extraordinary evidence.

We have reviewed the evidence, and have found no proof that anything untoward or unusual was consumed by the poster in question, or her husband.  

Further scrutiny reveals that the source of the rumors were obviously not Americans, and therefore never to be trusted.  You can’t trust those pesky Irish musicians. Never.  Everybody knows the Irish are a bunch of overimbibing, socialist Celtic Pagans, or maybe Druids, who knows, they all look alike, they who hate this country, and plot its downfall or at least plan to inflict their wretched European commie ginger haired marxist worker’s rights universal healthcare on us, which would destroy the delicate, negotiated detente we’ve negotiated with Kent Conrad and his very special donors.  Anyone caught posting youtubes of any music of the above, or posting recipes containing potato or cabbage ingredients, will also be banned.    

We here at [redacted] take election integrity very seriously.   We’ve banned thousands of people for far more, and we’ll ban as many people as possible for far less, for even having these impure thoughts.  

You have all been warned. Henceforth, by the Power Invested in Me, as Commander in Chief of the [redacted], this topic will not be discussed anymore on this website. Forever. Until the end of time.  

We have an election to win.  Look forwards, not back.

Example of Irish people being subversive and undermining the American pragmatic progressive agenda. Note upraised arms and dancing in audience, outside the white castle walls, clear indications of wanting a unicorn.

This is Amerika, Damnit !  We don’t DO unicorns!  We do Hope Nobody Notices!

The heart is a bloom

Shoots up through the stony ground

There’s no room

No space to rent in this town

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

What you don’t know you can feel it somehow

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

Don’t need it now

Was a beautiful day



http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyri…

B*stards.  Never could trust ’em in the first place.  They ought to be wiretapped or something.

Germany’s Chancellor Merkel expressed regrets for 6 accidental friendly fire deaths of Afghan soldiers to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday March 3rd.   http://www.google.com/hostedne…

So does Nato Brigadier General Eric Tremblay

http://www.euronews.net/2010/0…

Issuing an apology, NATO Brigadier General Eric Tremblay said: “We regret this tragic loss of life. We will try and strive to improve our tactics, techniques and procedures.”

Germany, The Local

Earlier Friday April 2

http://www.thelocal.de/nationa…

Earlier Friday, three German soldiers were killed and eight were injured – four seriously – when the Taliban ambushed a patrol in the worst firefight the Bundeswehr has seen in its nearly eight years in the war-torn country.

According to Brigadier Frank Leidenberger, the commander of the international ISAF forces in northern Afghanistan, the patrol was attacked by about 100 Taliban insurgents as it removed mines planted in the road in the dangerous district of Chahar Dara, near the Bundeswehr’s Kunduz base.

Other reports said up to 200 Taliban fighters had been involved in the ambush and had used rocket-propelled grenades among other weapons.

The deaths of the German soldiers bring to 39 the total number of Germans killed since the beginning of the Afghanistan war in 2002. They have caused shock and dismay in Germany.

There are currently 4000 troops from Germany in Afghanistan, many in the northern, more peaceful area, with 850 more to be sent soon.

Canada, CBC

Later Friday April 2

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/…

German soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier opened fire after coming across two civilian vehicles that refused to stop. Soon after, it was discovered the vehicles were carrying Afghan troops.

“Yesterday, after a military operation which took place in the Char Dara district of Kunduz province, Afghan national army troops were distributing food near the German troops when German troops opened fire,” said Afghan defence ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi.

“In this incident six Afghan soldiers were killed. The defence ministry have already condemned the incident,” he said.

America, Boston Globe

2 days later

http://www.boston.com/news/wor…

The friendly fire shooting Friday took place in northern Kunduz Province, where German forces were sharply criticized last September (2009) when they ordered an air strike on two tanker trucks that had been captured by the Taliban. Up to 142 people died, many of them civilians.

Speaking during a visit to South Africa, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg expressed sorrow over the friendly fire deaths and said German soldiers were doing everything possible to avoid such incidents.

The September 4th airstrike may have been called in by the Germans, but it was carried out by a United States warplane.

Chancellor Merkel expressed regret and took responsibility for that incident in December, and it resulted in a cabinet resignation.  http://af.reuters.com/article/…  

They call it missing in action, but those soldiers are missing at home, too, at every wedding and every graduation and every holiday.

Sometimes you meet an old man who has children and grandchildren now, and he never had a father. You meet amputees who had twenty good years ahead of them, playing softball or throwing a football around on Thanksgiving or pushing a stroller and lifting a baby ever so carefully out of it…

No war ever ends.

I remember Mr. Bush in the Press Club video, looking under a table for WMDs and all the elite reporters laughing, Karl Rove and Rumsfeld laughing and all the elite reporters laughing with them. Remember them!

There’s always broken souls and crazy men raging in bare rooms, and women who wake up screaming, and children alone in the dark, listening.

Names and dates of birth on tombstones and monuments, and a mother who remembers every birthday, soldiers buried in consecrated ground and others unburied in jungles and wastelands. This was the father who would have given the bride away. This was the brother who would have been the best man.

No war ever ends.