Ghosts of the '60s in Germany: The match that lit Germany's radicals was a Stasi spy.

Wall Street Journal ^ | 2009-05-29

[justlurking]

The past can never be predicted, and perhaps never more so than when it comes to the German left. Two years ago, we learned that Nobel Laureate Günter Grass -- the literary scourge of all things fascist, especially America -- had himself been a member of the Waffen SS. Now comes another zinger that casts the radical political and social upheavals of the late 1960s in new and revealing light.

The historical surprise concerns a turning point whose ripple effects were felt in Europe and beyond. On June 2, 1967, a West German policeman fatally shot an unarmed, 26-year-old literature student in the back of his head during a demonstration in West Berlin against the visiting Shah of Iran. Benno Ohnesorg became "the left wing's first martyr" (per the weekly Der Spiegel). His dying moments captured in a famous news photograph, Ohnesorg galvanized a generation of left-wing students and activists who rose up in the iconic year of 1968. What was a fringe soon turned to terrorism.

[justlurking]

I did a search, but wasn't able to find this posted. I thought it was stunning that an West German policeman spying for East Germany could have done this on orders from the Stasi. The files don't say whether he was ordered to do so, and he claims he was not paid -- his motivation to spy was apparently ideological.

But it's still ironic: the man that was portrayed as a symbol of the "fascists" was actually a Communist at heart.

[justlurking]

More info from the article:

To them his killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was the "fascist cop" at the service of a capitalist, pro-American "latent fascist state." "The post-fascist system has become a pre-fascist one," the German Socialist Student Union declared in their indictment hours after the killing. The ensuing movement drew its legitimacy and fervor from the Ohnesorg killing. Further enraging righteous passions, Mr. Kurras was acquitted by a court and returned to the police force.

Now all that's being turned on its head. Last week, a pair of German historians unearthed the truth about Mr. Kurras. Since 1955, he had worked for the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police. According to voluminous Stasi archives, his code name was Otto Bohl. The files don't say whether the Stasi ordered him to do what he did in 1967. But that only fuels speculation about a Stasi hand behind one of postwar Germany's transformative events.

[SuziQ]

I thought it was stunning that an West German policeman spying for East Germany could have done this on orders from the Stasi.

It's not stunning to me, at all. The 'anti-nuke movement' all through the 80's was an offshoot of the 60's 'peace movement', and both were bankrolled, at their roots, by the Soviets.

If East Germany wanted to foment discord in the West, why NOT precipitate that by killing someone involved in one of these marches and blame it on the West? I assume they thought it would give the terrorist groups that were also bankrolled by the Soviets some sort of righteous cover, and make their actions seem less reprehensible.

[GodGunsGuts]

...

[CondorFlight]

One wonders therefore if the Soviets ever engaged in similar activities in the USA...

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

“One wonders therefore if the Soviets ever engaged in similar activities in the USA...”

No need to wonder. Plenty of documentation, even from the ex-Soviet Union itself, that has come out in the past 20 years that the Soviets long had paid operatives planted in federal government and academe big time in the U.S.
Lots of books on the subject, even on Amazon.com. One that comes to mind is The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.

[SatinDoll]

Honduras - Killing Bullet Is Not Of Military Caliber

Quick translation here: http://hondurasabandoned.blogspot.com/2009/07/killing-bullet-is-not-of-military.html

The Minister of Defense Adolfo Lionel Sevilla said this afternoon that the bullet that killed a young man at the demonstration Sunday in the Toncontín airport did not come from a military weapon. According to the experts, the bullet that took the life of a young 19 year old, was not from a military caliber. The report reveals that the direction the young man died does not coincide with the trajectory of the direction of the bullet from the armed forces.

****

It happens all the time in central/south America.

[Bender2]

And 42 years from now... what will our kids and grandkids find out about The Øbamanation?

And, sad to say... it will probably not make any different to the Peoples Republic of Amerika