Bill SprichtJust another WordPress weblog

DEM 0,00. That’s the amount of money that the unified German republic gave out to the Stasi’s victims, including those who spent years behind bars for trying to leave the country or for saying or doing things considered politically dangerous. Contrast that with the pensions enjoyed today by former “civil servants” of the East German Communist Dictatorship. Frau Honecker, I imagine, lives large in Chile, a real Pensionistin enjoying her last years.

Read the rest of this entry »

This one is from a book I am reading about East Germany, Mary Fulbrook’s Anatomy of a Dictatorship (US, UK). It begins the section named “Coercion and Control: Stasi, Police and Military”:

Read the rest of this entry »

Kosmoblog has a nice summary of the major players in the next (we hope) German government. Is Angela Merkel a new name to you? Then go check out his blog entry.

These are people we can deal with. I talked about Ms. Merkel a few times in 2003.

A hat tip to Ulrich Speck of Kosmoblog for pointing me to this Spectator article about Germany (free reg required) by Wolfgang Munchau. A snipped is below, but also visit Kosmoblog’s entry for the footnotes. Snippet:

Read the rest of this entry »

Via Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: A German court has lifted the ban on the deportation of the “Caliph of Cologne” — Kalif von Köln. Granted asylum in Germany in 1992, Metin Kaplan later proclaimed the caliphate of Cologne and was then convicted of “calling for murder” (Mordaufruf) in 2000. Since then the government has been trying to get him out of Germany.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have no idea who Princess Louise is/was, but the cool good guys from last week in Iraq were her “Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,” who, if you didn’t catch the story already, initiated and very successfully completed the first British bayonette charge in over 20 years. Read about it. And let’s not forget those who preceded them:

Read the rest of this entry »

I know it is terribly unfashionable in this post-historical age to think there is anything special or sacred about military tradition and values. Things like discipline, for example. Yet in this Washington Post exclusive story about the possibility that General Sanchez was present at Abu Ghraib when torture was inflicted during interrogations, we have a Brigadier General (Karpinski) giving interviews and posing suggestive questions:

Read the rest of this entry »

UK lefties and appeasers are ramping up for big protests while the President of the United States is in town, as they continue to spread the word that removing vicious, threatening regimes from power — even after September 11th and its lessons — is somehow incompatible with their utopian visions. (Oh I forgot, the “lessons” were about how badly the U.S. has acted in the Middle East, particularly in its support of the only liberal democracy in the region.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a nice response to the entry (2 entries ago) regarding Sophie Scholl and the German resistance group The White Rose. Thank you to the people who have written.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Craddick, blogging at Fragmenta Philosophica, packs a lot into these 800 words responding to the complaint “There never was a consistent rationale for war; the ‘case’ kept changing.”

It’s part three of an ongoing “Rethinking Iraq” series.