Free Republic

Support is growing for a referendum on whether to ban large landlords from the German capital and turn their property into social housing stock ...The Social Democratic party (SPD), senior partner in Berlin’s current governing coalition and the main driver behind the privatisation of the capital’s housing stock in the late 90s and early 00s, has distanced itself from the campaign, although it has proposed freezing rents in the city for five years. The SPD’s youth branch, by contrast, has trumped the campaign’s demands and proposed expropriating any landlord with over 20 apartments... ...Taheri, now the campaign’s spokesperson, argues that...

Half- hearted measures rarely if ever succeed. More times than not they make situations worse because they waste time and energy that could be used to actually achieve our goal. Anyone who has considered the problem of illegal immigration is familiar with the half-hearted phrases “comprehensive immigration reform” and its companion “secure the border.” Thanks to Barack Obama’s cavalier attitude toward our safety and well-being we can clearly see that “secure the border” is an empty phrase. It was coined by clever politicians of both Parties to anesthetize us into thinking there is a real effort to shut down our...

(...) The delegates, many of them former East German Communists but also younger people, will debate an extraordinary motion put forward by some members: They want their party to declare that the building of the wall was an inescapable necessity. If that leaves any doubts about the Left party’s nostalgia for a wall that imprisoned 17 million people for nearly 30 years, a newspaper survey published this month by The Berliner Zeitung showed that 75 percent of that party’s supporters in Berlin thought the wall was justified or partly justified. (...) Respondents said the wall was necessary to stop the...

A friend alerts us to a woman clearly ahead of her time. According to the Telegraph, a Mrs. Berliner-Mauer, of Sweden, recently revealed that she "tied the knot" with the famous wall while visiting Berlin in 1979. The blissful creature-to-creature ceremony was conducted "before a handful of guests." Clearly biased in its reporting, however, the Telegraph castigates the woman as having a "bizarre fetish for inanimate objects." Objectum-Sexuality, to be regressively clinical. But please: Bizarre? What's truly bizarre is the newspaper's own embrace of Objectosexophobia. Shame! Shame on all objectosexophobists! No doubt "wall friendly" New York and California stand ready...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, who oversaw some of the Cold War's biggest swaps of captured spies in Berlin, has died at 82, his family says.

Reagan's courageous act in '87 is worth noting by today's GOP For conservatives and Republicans who are wondering what in the world happened to their party, we should recall June 12, 1987. On that day 21 years ago, President Ronald Reagan stood before the wall dividing East and West Berlin and directed his famous appeal to the leader of the then Soviet Union: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Two and half years later, the wall was down and a new chapter had begun. It's always worth recalling Reagan's courageous act and words of that time. But we particularly should...

On June 17, 1953, East German workers took to the streets to protest against hardships instigated by the communist regime. The uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks, but it set the stage for peaceful protests of 1989. Germany on Tuesday will commemorate the 50th anniversary of street protests that nearly toppled the communist government of East Germany. Stemming from the unrest caused by the government's announcement it would increase working hours for factory employees by 10 percent while simultaneously drastically raising the price of groceries, the demonstrations were bloodily put down with the might of the Soviet Red Army. In...

Washington Politics & Policy Desk, 4/2/2003, 5:03 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., April 2 (UPI) -- This here's the 344th Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina. This week's column is about logic, facks, n the hist'ry ov Amurican wars includin the Cold War, as applied ta the comin "Battle ov Baghdad." Since ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq., izza student ov sech thangs, I'll turn this over ta him. The Berlin Solution to the Baghdad ProblemLast week I watched many hours of press conferences in Washington and at the American headquarters...

A theme park that lets visitors travel back to in time to communist East Germany is to be set up in Berlin. The GDR Fun Park will be built in the east of the formerly divided city. Visitors will pay about £8 to spend the day watching old news programmes and films before a GDR-style lunch. German newspapers say it is not yet clear whether lunch orders will be met with the traditional GDR reply of: "Ain't got that." Theme park visitors will also be able to ride the infamous Trabant cars. GDR citizens usually had to wait years before...