Free Republic

The giant gold and silver satellite glittered against the black sky as space shuttle Atlantis closed in on it from below. Commander Hoot Gibson and pilot Guy Gardner flew the approach, while mission specialist Mike Mullane, at the other end of the flight deck, readied the shuttle’s robot arm for a capture. Downstairs in the airlock, mission specialists Jerry Ross and Bill Shepherd waited in their spacesuits for Gibson’s order to go outside and attempt a rescue. The mission of STS-27 had been to deploy the first in a series of new spy satellites that used radar to observe ground...

Russia plans to replace most of its older (Cold War era) ICBMs in the next five years. But all of these older missiles will not be retired until 2020. Currently, Russia has 538 ICBMs in service, 71 percent of them the most modern Topols (SS-25 and SS-27). Only 56 are the most modern, Topol-M design. About a dozen of these are the road-mobile versions, that avoid destruction in a first strike, by constantly moving around on the roads 200-300 kilometers northeast of Moscow. The 54 foot long transporter for these 46 ton missiles is a 16 wheel vehicle, using a...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

Cold War Apologetics Malcolm A. Kline, December 3, 2009 A new book on Education And The Cold War: The Battle For The American School attempts to downplay the dominance of the Left in schools. “In other words, schools were not simply the expression of ruling class domination, but, rather, they functioned as the sites and the means of realization of that domination,” the author, Andrew Harman, writes. “Educational ideology was not necessarily the sole product of bourgeois class-consciousness, but rather the product of bourgeois domination of the educational process.” “Educational struggles were dialectical: education was not the pure instrument of...

MINSK (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday. Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5. The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders. "We may not be able to do...

The government has decided to undertake a major replacement of aging military equipment. In many cases, this is essential, because buying new gear basically halted (with a few exceptions, like ballistic missiles) during the 1990s. So most of the armed forces are using Cold War era gear manufactured in the 1970s and 80s. Fortunately, even older equipment was junked as the armed forces shrank 80 percent in the 1990s. According to the new government plan, in the next decade, at least a third of current gear will be replaced, and in some categories (usually high tech), over 80 percent. President...

The first years of Perestroika were marked with the growing epidemic of AIDS in the West and the rising popularity of TV call-in shows featuring Soviet and American citizens in Russia. I watched all these shows but one. I know about the one I missed from my grandmother who gave me an enthusiastic recap: “Some American woman asked a question about sex, and a Russian woman got up and said “There is no sex in the USSR!”” Later, this phrase became proverbial. The poor woman became a laughing stock. However, there was some truth to her words as there was...

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vitaly Ginzburg, a Russian physicist who survived Stalin's purges by working on the Soviet atomic bomb project and later won the Nobel Prize for physics, died in Moscow late on Sunday after a long illness. He was 93. Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel physics prize for developing the theory behind superconductors, materials which allow electricity to pass without resistance at very low temperatures. He shared the prize with British-American Anthony Leggett and Russian-born U.S. scientist Alexei Abrikosov. But Ginzburg's career as a Soviet scientist almost ended when he took as his second wife a woman arrested in...

Hillary Clinton Scrubs Ronald Reagan From History Nile Gardiner November 10th, 2009 It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness. The Secretary of State’s remarks yesterday in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President...

Once again we prepare to honor those who have served in all of our wars, paying special homage to those who did not return from our wars. Nearly all of us who served in combat zones over our history view those whose names are etched in stone on the many Veterans Memorials as the true heroes of our conflicts. Viet Nam is labeled as “America’s Longest War” due to our involvement in that country from 1950 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. That 25 years pales when considering that after World War Two, we began engagement in a much...

The President of leisure has a pretty slow day Monday, highlighting the point that no pressing business kept him from celebrating the fall of communism 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Jim Gerraghty of The Campaign Spot on National Review goes over the official schedule for our leader yesterday: Just look at the man's schedule: He had a 10 a.m. daily briefing from the intelligence community, a 10:30 a.m. economic daily briefing, an 11 a.m. meeting with senior advisers . . . and then, right after that, at 6:45 in the evening, he had to sign an executive...

Many believed. So many were disappointed. 9 minute video, halfway down the page. Excellent encapsulation of life in East Berlin from the '50s to the fall of the Berlin Wall, including indoctrination of children, MEDIOCRE leaders, secret police and of course the wonderful architecture of East Germany. "Thomas Hoepker's photos chronicle 40 years of strange, sad, vicious and sometimes hilarious life in East Berlin.

Amidst all of the hoopla surrounding the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall the two men most responsible have been all but forgotten. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world dignitaries praised former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for the fall of the wall, the two men perhaps most responsible, President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were all but forgotten. Merkel praised Gorbachev, “You made this possible---you courageously let things happen.” He let things happen? Is she kidding? Gorbachev had no choice but to let things happen. Let’s revisit real history for a moment please. The fall of...

TODAY every news service in the world will transmit the same gratifying and facile images of the destruction of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago: a moment when -- as solemn-voiced announcers will intone in practised cadences -- not just a wall, but an entire era was ground into brick-dust. Such commemorations are easy and agreeable because they invite us to celebrate the ending of something, without requiring us to know anything about what it was that ended. What could be more pleasant than to enjoy an obscurely heart-lifting, lung-expanding sensation of liberation without having to trouble ourselves as to...

For many in the GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification meant the loss of jobs, homes, security and equalityOn 9 November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down I realised German unification would soon follow, which it did a year later. This meant the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the country in which I was born, grew up, gave birth to my two children, gained my doctorate and enjoyed a fulfilling job as a lecturer in English literature at Potsdam University. Of course, unification brought with it the freedom to travel the world and, for...

The collapse of communism: Reagan, Thatcher and the pope By Joseph A. Cannon Deseret News Published: Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009 12:12 a.m. MST Twenty years ago, my wife, Jan, and I were in what was then called West Berlin for a conference. One pleasant afternoon we walked along the Berlin Wall from the Brandenburg Gate to Checkpoint Charlie. During that time, there were significant rancorous anti-Communist demonstrations in East Germany, primarily in the southern part. A German friend, with typical Prussian hubris, dismissed them. "Nothing will come of this, these are just the ineffective rumblings of a bunch of Bavarians."...

BERLIN (AFP) – World leaders joined more than 100,000 revellers Monday for emotional celebrations 20 years after the Berlin Wall's fall and called for a new transatlantic push against threats to global peace. Chancellor Angela Merkel joined luminaries past and present to mark the defining moment in the end of communist rule in Europe, when the crumbling East German state finally opened the despised concrete border on November 9, 1989. Merkel, who grew up in the Stalinist state, marched through the historic Brandenburg Gate with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, presidents Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia,...

Guitars, keyboards and drums did not topple the Berlin Wall. But for the young people who helped bring down Communist regimes across Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989, pop music was a profoundly subversive force, inspiration and vital tool of protest for challenging and undermining a totalitarian state stricter than any parent. Now middle aged, some of the musicians who played in ostracism during those last gray years of Communist rule gathered in New York over the weekend for the festival Rebel Waltz: Underground Music From Behind the Iron Curtain. Performing at Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village......

BERLIN – The celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall started off well enough – former President George H.W. Bush, ex-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, and former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl gathered in front of nearly 2,000 dignitaries in Berlin last week to celebrate their role in bringing about the end of the Cold War. It was a happy affair, with Mr. Bush and Mr. Gorbachev exchanging laughs and smiles as they recalled Nov. 9, 1989...fractures between allies have shown themselves in what has been billed as an event to celebrate unity. One of...

Twenty years ago today, supporters of freedom and human rights cheered and wept for joy as the Berlin Wall was torn down by jubilant young Germans. To so many, that heady day seemed to herald the emergence of a better world. The spectre of communism had finally been laid to rest. Liberty had triumphed over tyranny. The end of the Cold War even led some to proclaim that this was 'the end of history' - which was to say that liberal democracy was now the dominant and unchallengeable force in the world. However, the 9/11 attacks on America tragically proved...

The Cold War was the original war of ideas. When Mr. Reagan used the term "Evil Empire" in 1983, his detractors laughed at his old-fashioned notions of moral judgment. When he stood at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987 and called on Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," his critics sighed, "There he goes again."

The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy. In this July 24, 2008, photo, then-Sen. Barack Obama is seen greeting the crowd in Berlin. (AP Photo) President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does...

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (R) introduces his partner Michael Mronz (L) to his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton during the Atlantic Council Awards ceremony at the Adlon hotel in Berlin, November 8, 2009, one day ahead of the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach (GERMANY ANNIVERSARY POLITICS)

Noting tomorrow’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday’s Today show, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw claimed East Germans were “still adjusting to the harsh economic realities” of life after communism. But a recent poll of former East bloc countries by the Pew Research Center actually discovered that the people of what was East Germany are actually the biggest enthusiasts of the shift to capitalism, with 82% approving, higher than any other ex-communist country. Brokaw did note, however, that the current “center-right” Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, was “born and raised in East Germany,”...

BERLIN — Harald Jaeger was a loyal East German border guard — respected and trusted to command a crossing point to the west on Berlin's Bornholmer Strasse. So when his checkpoint was swarmed on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, as East Germany announced the border was being opened after 28 years, Jaeger felt ashamed as he let the thousands pass through.

Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes. The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone. It was the most dramatic, life-affirming...

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, but few of the news stories marking the anniversary have explained the event's full significance. The Cold War had been raging for 14 years before the wall went up on Aug. 13, 1961. How could its collapse, on Nov. 9, 1989, have heralded the Cold War's demise? Berlin was always the centerpiece of the Cold War and, more often than many remember, very nearly the front line of real combat. At the end of World War II, the city was divided into four sectors, each occupied by one of the four allied...

With Monday marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan's son Michael tells Newsmax that his father was deeply troubled by the wall from the night it was first erected. Michael Reagan also said President Barack Obama's decision not to attend the anniversary ceremonies in Berlin is "sad," but "completely consistent" with Obama. On June 12, 1987, President Reagan delivered a rousing speech near the Berlin Wall in which he challenged the leader of the Soviet Union: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Less than 2 1/2 years later, on Nov. 9, 1989, the wall...

Years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were sitting in a backyard near Stanford, where Shultz was teaching. The two men discussed what they thought was the turning point in ending the Cold War. Gorbachev said it was two leaders — he and President Ronald Reagan — sitting in a room together, talking. Shultz said it was Reagan’s decision to show military might in 1983 by sending missiles to West Germany. “The strength we put on display was never used,” Shultz said. “Strength works hand in...

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...

The 20th anniversary of the 1989 East European revolutions has re-opened contentious debate over who won the Cold War and what caused Soviet communism to disintegrate so rapidly in its final years. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a symbolic milestone, heralding the break-up of the Soviet Union two years later. Looking back, many people directly involved are still asking: Was Soviet communism defeated? Was it overthrown? Or did it simply collapse from within? The rapid succession of events which marked the end of the Cold War is not in dispute. Poland's historic roundtable talks between...

The Berlin Wall was the physical representation of the "Cold War." The structure across the city of Berlin was not built to protect Communist Germany from the forces of freedom, it was constructed to keep the East Germans from fleeing communism. During the 750th anniversary of the founding of the city of Berlin, President Reagan explained the reasons the wall had to come down We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make...

In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (11). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world." But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama...

For nearly three decades the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War - it divided a city and in effect the entire country. And then on November 9, 1989 it crumbled and with it Communist East Germany and the Cold War itself. On the outskirts of Berlin lies the Glienicke Bridge. It spans the Havel River and connects Berlin to the neighboring city of Potsdam. Its idyllic setting belies a darker history. During the height of the Cold War, it was known as the Bridge of Spies - where communist and western officials exchanged secret agents that had...

BERLIN (Reuters) – George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl paid their respects to the ordinary people who were behind the peaceful revolution of 1989 that brought down the Berlin Wall at an emotional ceremony in Berlin on Saturday. The three statesmen from the United States, Soviet Union and West Germany -- whose steady-handed leadership paved the way for the Wall's opening on November 9, 1989 -- recalled the heady events that led to the end of the Cold War at a ceremony attended by 1,800 people. "We Germans don't have very much in our history to be proud of,"...

Michael Barone finds it odd that Barack Obama can go to Oslo and Copenhagen for mainly personal reasons, but somehow can’t find the time to travel to Berlin to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — the climax of the Cold War and the West’s triumph. Given the key role played by the US in the collapse of Soviet Communism, people have good cause to wonder why the leader of the free world can find time to pick up an award for himself and pitch his hometown to the International Olympic Committee, but not to...

President Barack Obama declined to participate in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of fall of Communism in Europe, saying he has “mixed feelings” about the event and “too little time to spare.” “On the one hand, Communism did some brutal things,” Obama acknowledged. “On the other hand, they had some noble goals and made some important progress toward achieving them.” Among the noble goals achieved according to the President were “the provision of universal health care, free college education, and the elimination of capitalistic greed. We can only hope to do as well in our country.” The president cited...

Twenty years later, historians still can't figure out why the West won.The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Michael Meyer, New York: Scribner, 272 pages, $26The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann, New York: Viking, 416 pages, $27.95 We don’t know the exact hierarchy of motives, but it is certain that Chris Gueffroy was willing to leave his family and friends to avoid conscription into the army. Considering the associated risks, it’s likely that the 20-year-old was also strongly motivated...

[excepts] Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year. " The ubiquitous Trabant or Trabi, East Germany's legendary plastic car with its clattering two-stroke engine, was a favorite butt of jokes as well. Like this one: "A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow." The jokes gave insights into what ordinary East Germans were thinking about their regime and about current events. The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 spawned a new proverb, for example: If the farmer falls off...

The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more? On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country's militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righteous citizen dismantling of the...

As she ended a two-day visit to Russia designed to further improve the Obama administration's already warm relations with Moscow, Mrs. Clinton issued a rare rebuke of some of her colleagues in Washington, though she did not name them. "We have people in our government, and you have people in your government, who are still living in the past," she told a hall packed with hundreds of students at Moscow State University. "They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other, and we have to prove them wrong." .......

The government is very touchy about its nuclear weapons, apparently because it's only the nukes that can dissuade a foreign nation threatening invasion. The Russian armed forces can do it, as it has shrunk 80 percent since the end of the Cold War in 1991, and fallen apart as well. Lack of money means that Russian military technology has not kept up. This includes the nuclear weapons. While Russia got the new Topol M ICBM into service since 1991, this was a Cold War era project, meant to replace the older, and much less effective and reliable ICBMs. But while...

The first tank phalanx receives inspection in a parade of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Chang'an Street in central Beijing China today celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism. Tiananmen Square became a hi-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey 'Mao' suit, and the Communist Party leadership watching the...

Lot’s have been said about how divided and “angry” America is these days. But has anyone really asked: why? The answer is rather simple: years of pure political cowardice in actually governing reality. There is a truth in saying that the division that now roils the nation is the by-product of that freakish time known as the 1960s. Arguably, it was during this time that the great division between competing American visions was sewn. But it is also a convenient argument to make this snapshot of history the political and cultural scapegoat for what came after. There is no need...

Meat from Swedish stockpiles dating back to the Cold War has been sold to Poland to be served in restaurants, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper. The Swedish state phased out its stockpiles of tinned meat at the end of the 1990s. The Swedish Board of Agriculture then sold 1.5 million kilograms of the meat, which dates back up to 27 years, to a Swedish trading company. The meat was offloaded on the condition that it could only be sold as food outside of the European Union. Within the EU it could be classified only as...

In the early 1980s, according to newly released documents, Fidel Castro was suggesting a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States, until Moscow dissuaded him by patiently explaining how the radioactive cloud resulting from such a strike would also devastate Cuba. The cold war was then in one of its chilliest phases. President Ronald Reagan had begun a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert as a means of developing new arms. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war. Dozens of books warned...

Written June of 1916 We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main...

Link only, due to Wired's copyright complaints. Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday MachineI'm posting this without any text, because I think it's important. The "Doomsday" machine is apparently real, and still operational. Read the article for more details.

Written in English before November 9 1915 Dear Comrades! We are extremely glad to get your leaflet. Your appeal to the members of the Socialist Party to struggle for a new International, for clear-cut revolutionary socialism as taught by Marx and Engels, and against the opportunism, especially against those who are in favor of working class participation in a war of defence, corresponds fully with the position our party (Social-Democratic Labor Party of Russia, Central Committee) has taken from the beginning of this war and has always taken during more than ten years. We send you our sincerest greetings &...