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Addressing the ceremony on Bernauer Street, famously divided by the Wall and now site of a memorial, Mayor Wowereit said the capital was remembering the "saddest day in its recent history". "It is our common responsibility to keep alive the memories and pass them on to the next generation, to maintain freedom and democracy and to do everything so that such injustices may never happen again," he said. At a ceremony at a former crossing-point, President Wulff said the wall had been "an expression of fear" of those who created it.

Today, with a statue in the appropriately named Freedom Square in Budapest, Hungarians will honor the man who helped secure their freedom at last from Communist rule. It is just one of four celebrations being held this week across Europe to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan organized by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. The Czech Republic, Poland and Great Britain will also hold events in honor of the 40th president and his legacy in bringing down the Iron Curtain. Reagan pursued his three-pronged strategy to win the Cold War. The first two prongs of this...

South Korean Marines fired rifles at a South Korean commercial aircraft flying near the sea border with North Korea, thinking it was one of the communist North's jet fighters, but they never hit their target, military sources said on Saturday. The shooting illustrates the level of tension between the two Koreas, still technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, which came close to all-out war last year. A Marine Corps spokesman said two soldiers guarding an island on the waters off the South's western city of Incheon fired their K-2...

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Voice of Russia (VOR) Radio announces the launch of two U.S. stations in New York and Washington, D.C. The new stations will air live programming with the Russian perspective on international news, culture, arts and events over 1430 AM and 1390 AM frequency, respectively. The stations mark the first time VOR will produce programming directly from the United States rather than broadcasting news from the Moscow-based radio program. "This is a very significant move for Voice of Russia because it is the first time in the history of the station that material being...

There is little doubt that global socialism is on the march and arguably at its peak. America is closer to becoming a socialist state than any time in her history. For the first time we have a president whose world view is more in line with Karl Marx than George Washington. President Obama’s political career was launched in the living room of communist extremist and domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers. He has surrounded himself with more than forty Czars many of which profess to be Marxists and Maoists. In doing so he has been able to usurp Congress’ ability to perform...

This new Middle East cold war comes complete with its own spy-versus-spy intrigues, disinformation campaigns, shadowy proxy forces, supercharged state rhetoric—and very high stakes. "The cold war is a reality," says one senior Saudi official. "Iran is looking to expand its influence. This instability over the last few months means that we don't have the luxury of sitting back and watching events unfold." On March 14, the Saudis rolled tanks and troops across a causeway into the island kingdom of Bahrain. The ruling family there, long a close Saudi ally, appealed for assistance in dealing with increasingly large protests. Iran...

Cold War Neutrals Now Taking Sides, Timidly Europe's Cold War neutrals now taking sides, timidly, as they redefine security policy The Associated Press By KARL RITTER Associated Press STOCKHOLM April 9, 2011 (AP) Swedish fighter jets are roaring into action over Libya under NATO command. Ireland is offering itself as a transit hub for U.S. military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even famously independent Switzerland has peacekeepers in Kosovo. For Europe's once-staunchly neutral countries, much has changed in the two decades since the Cold War ended. With no East-West conflict as a reference point, the concept of neutrality has been...

The policy documents published over the last year by the Obama administration indicate that it believes in the efficacy of traditional Cold War deterrence as the remedy to the challenge of rogue states acquiring nuclear weapons. Another assumption is that the Iranian regime is "rational" and hence deterrable. But the cultural propensity of a people toward "rationality" does not determine the behavior of their autocratic leadership. Furthermore, both Sunni and Shiite traditions of Jihad view the willingness to challenge superior force as an exemplary deed. In Shiite Islam, this is augmented by the idealization of suffering and martyrdom. Failure to...

It was a blast from the past this week, as mostly forgotten one-time Life cover boy, radical historian and Yale Professor turned community organizer Staughton Lynd surfaced to add… nothing, to the subject of the Rosenbergs and the atomic bomb spy plot. His article in the Marxist rag, Monthly Review (who knew that still existed, either) was ironically titled, “Is There Anything More to Say about the Rosenberg Case?”I’m willing to say there might be—but Lynd sure didn’t prove it. But he did find some novel ways to say nothing new about the case while exposing the moral idiocy of...

For the better part of the past decade, moviegoers have gotten a new batch of comic-book adaptations every summer. The trend continues in 2011 with Captain America, Thor, Green Lantern, and the latest film in the X-Men franchise, X-Men: First Class. Set in the 1960s, First Class goes back to the origins of the mutant team, before leader Professor Xavier and archenemy Magneto became foes. And as the just-released trailer for the film reveals, this prequel has an unexpected political twist. It seems that the X-Men intervene in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, there are a couple different directions this...

As we conservatives celebrate the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth amid the uprising in Egypt, we’d do well to reflect upon what it is that made Reagan such a unique, impressive and singular politician. For me, three traits in particular stand out: his strategic vision, his optimism, and his unwavering belief in the universal aspiration for liberty. Unfortunately, all three of these characteristics are sorely lacking, I regret to say, in most of the conservative commentary about Egypt, Islam and the Middle East. Reagan, you will recall, came into office in 1981 when all of the “experts” — including many...

Learning a lesson in Iceland. Ronald Reagan was not always “conservative,” and for this, conservatives love him. The modern conservative mind thinks in a certain box – a good box, not a bad one, but a box, nevertheless. We have an ideology: government can do these specific things, and no more. Tax something and you’ll get less of it, subsidize a thing and you’ll get more of it… etc. We have a host of such pronouncements, and we are usually right. We advocate the limited government of the Constitution, and the free economy of Hayek and Hazlitt, because we believe...

February is one short month long on holidays from the sublime (President's Day, St. Valentine's Day) to the ridiculous (Groundhog Day). And since 1926, February has been designated Black History Month. Three outstanding American Presidents have birthdays this month - one from each century during a defining war in American history: 18th century - the American Revolution: George Washington was our first president under the Constitution, chief among our founders as well as a great general leading the Continental Army in the American Revolution. He was born in colonial Virginia on February 22, 1732. .... 19th century - the Civil...

Many universities have set up centers to examine the history of the Cold War. The Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington D. C., for example, created an offshoot called The Cold War International History Project. That institute has over the years hosted many conferences, with panels of scholars representing all points of view. Two years ago, I was an active participant in a two days session at the CWIHP about Soviet espionage, that was based on the new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. The sponsors were fully aware of contending views on the issue...

U.S. Will Counter Chinese Arms Buildup “I’ve been concerned about the development of the antiship cruise and ballistic missiles ever since I took this job,” he added. “We knew they were working on a stealth aircraft. I think that what we’ve seen is that they may be somewhat further ahead in the development of that aircraft than our intelligence had earlier predicted.” Mr. Gates said he hoped his talks with Chinese leaders would reduce the need for more American weaponry in the Pacific. He also said that if Chinese leaders considered the United States a declining power because of the...

On Sunday, February 6, 2011, the world will turn its eyes to Arlington, TX for Super Bowl XLV, to be held at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium. February 6 is also notable for another "cowboy" - this one, an actor-turned-President. February 6, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of this nation's 40th President, Ronald Reagan. (more at link...)

Outspoken former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean apparently isn't planning to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday February 6, around which there are coast-to-coast events planned. Instead, the former Vermont governor is shrugging his shoulders, asking what all the fuss is about? At a media roundtable today, Dean suggested that Reagan had little impact other than stopping the social progression begun under FDR and seemed to dismiss the Gipper's efforts to crush communism, giving the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev credit for ending the Cold War, a statement sure to draw sneers from Reagan fans and even historians. While Reagan is...

That’s what the FBI was asking itself in 1988. That year is not a typo. Gawker has scans of the FBI documents showing that the reputed Godfather of neo-conservatism was a person of interest in an ongoing investigation into a potential Soviet spy. The FBI heavily redacted the documents—citing national security in many instances—so it’s difficult to make out exactly what happened. But it seems fairly clear that, sometime around May of 1988, the FBI’s counterintelligence division came to possess a notebook or address book belonging to a suspected Soviet agent. And Irving Kristol’s name was in it. That launched...

‘Rockin’ the Wall’ DVD Review: A Splendid Reminder that Rock and Roll Means Freedom! by Ezra Dulis You had to hide it somewhere that no one would find it: your very first record, tape, CD– whatever medium– that Mom and Dad didn’t approve of. You had to listen to it through headphones or when they were out of the house. You had to do this because you knew it was an act of rebellion; your parents did not want you hearing that music performed that way with those lyrics, and you decided that you wouldn’t obey them. According to the...

Despite the end of the Cold War, and the dismantling of over 25,000 nuclear weapons, NATO still maintains a stock of nuclear bombs in Europe. These are American weapons, to be used by NATO allies with U.S. permission. They are not covered by START (the strategic nuclear disarmament treaty) because they are not strategic, they are local, or "theater" weapons. NATO would like to negotiate a disarmament treaty to cover such non-strategic nukes, but to get the Russians to do that, it helps if there are some nukes under NATO control. Like with START, a treaty covering non-strategic weapons would...