Grand Larceny?

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Crickey, this really does seem to fall under the definition of what you could call a scandal. According to the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn one billion dollars was plundered from Iraq’s defence Ministry between June 2004 and February 2005 (during the government of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi):

“It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history,” Ali Allawi, Iraq’s Finance Minister, told The Independent. “Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal.”

Where to find the German election results

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In a comment to Tobias’s post below, Guerby complains that he/she/they can’t find the election results.

Well, then, look here. Updated every ten minutes. Since my last post, the Union have widened their lead over SPD to a full percentage point; but FDP are back down to single digits. All just changes round the margin, though; and the SPD seem to have done better out of the ‘overhang mandates’ than have the Union.

No dramatic changes likely between now and the official results, then.

Apparently 粗大塵 does not mean what I, judging by the context, had thought it means

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I’ve been harshing on the Union and their little dog Toto the FDP pretty nastily throughout the campaign.1 Surely, though, I should spare a thought for Die Linke.

It’s easy to fail to pay the ‘Left Party’ the attention they deserve, mostly because nobody is likely to form a coalition with them. But still it should be noted: they did very well in this election. They should receive the congratulations they deserve.

Congratulations, then, wendebeschädigte East German communists: you polled surprisingly well, once you put yourselves under a West German carpetbagger.

And congratulations, Oskar Lafontaine. Many years ago you were the only major German political leader willing to speak the truth about the cost of unification. What a way you’ve come since then, finishing your career by becoming the first West German head of the SED.
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Grand coalition under Schröder?

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CDU advertising for SchröderBeing stuck in a traffic jam is probably not the best place to be to blog about the German election. On the other hand, it may well be an excellent metaphor for the result of today’s German elections, which Mrs T sketched below. Hearing the results on the radio, the first thing I that sprang to mind was Goethe – “Here now I stand, poor fool, and see I’m just as wise as formerly.” Well, maybe not quite.
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The results begin to harden

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Those numbers are starting to gel. There’s been movement, as one would expect, but mostly on the right-hand side of the decimal point. SPD look to have polled very slightly better, the Union very slightly worse than it seemed an hour ago. (But NB: Hessia is still uncertain.)

Schröder has just spoken. On the one hand, he ruled out Red/Green/Even Redder once again. On the other, he stated that he’d be continuing as chancellor. If he’s not merely spouting shite, that can mean only one thing: Red/Yellow/Green, the ‘Ampel‘. One wonders whether he already had a deal sewn up with Guido.

The Union have actually done worse than they did under Stoiber in the previous elections. The first post-election casualty, then, is likely to be Angela Merkel. There will be no shortage of CDU knives out for her now. Her career is probably over. And that’s a real pity; she’s far the best of the lot of them.

First results

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The first preliminary projections in the German election have been released, as usual, at 18.00. As expected, the Union have the most votes. As unexpected, they’re not doing nearly as well as people had thought, polling a mere 2% ahead of the SPD at 35.7%. Of those 10 million voters ‘undecided’ as the campaign drew to a close, 30% broke for the Union, but 33% for SPD. The big surprise is the FDP, who with more than 10% are doing much better than I’d have expected. But at this point neither B/Y nor R/G have a majority.

This is all to be taken with many very large grains of salt. It’s early evening yet, and those numbers are but a preliminary extrapolation. Still, at this moment the likeliest outcomes (to judge on a purely numerical basis) seem to be a grand coalition or the ‘Ampel‘ that everybody had been rejecting out of hand.

Think-Tank Policy-Wonking

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What better way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon whiling the hours away before the imminent German election results and Barça’s next away match than leafing through think-tank papers?

Well at least I have found myself a good thread to feed me them:

“Policypointers is an online facility created to enable those involved in government, academe and the media to gain rapid access to the research and conclusions of think tanks around the world.”

Among the interesting links I found there was this one to the European Policy Centre Website.
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German Election Primer

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With only one night left to sleep before German voters (about 10 million of whom are allegedly still “undecided”) will be asked to decide about the composition of the next Bundestag, and probably, though not necessarily, about the composition of their next government, Spiegel Online’s English language service kindly prepared a contextualised (links to articles they published on specific issues) primer about the bumpy road this year’s contenders had to take to get into the Chancellery. Useful – and hopefully interesting – Saturday afternoon reading for everone who doesn’t feel too comfortable yet about the intricacies of German politics.