Considering the amount of coverage that the arbitrarily chosen 20^th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall received, one would think that it was purely, or at least mostly a media event.

As it turned out, despite the cold rain falling on November 9, 2009, it was more of a celebration of the human spirit, of the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and a call for action against continuing violations of human rights throughout the world.

There have been many discussions as to who actually contributed the most to the disintegration of communism.

Most knowledgeable experts underscore the huge contribution of Pope John Paul II, who has given the Polish people the encouragement needed to start the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and to found the Solidarity trade union in 1980.

The communist government has cracked down on Solidarnosc on December 13, 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but the opposition remained very active, finally reaching the point in February of 1989 of forcing the Polish government to initiate talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.

Here’s the rest of the timeline of events, leading up to the demise of communism in Europe:

1989

April 5: The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.

May 2: Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.

Aug. 19: The ‘Pan-European Picnic’ – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West.

Aug. 24: Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.

Sept. 10: Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.

Oct. 18: East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.

Nov. 4: One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.

Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls.

Nov. 17: The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia erupts in reaction to a police crackdown on peaceful student protests in Prague. Days of mass demonstrations ensue.

Nov. 24: Communists in Prague step down.

Dec. 3: Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, speaking after a press conference between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were concluding a shipboard summit at Malta, declared: “From Yalta to Malta, the cold war ended at 12.45 p.m. today.”

Dec. 22: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown. He and his wife, Elena, are executed three days later after a summary trial.

1990

April 8: Hungary elects a non-communist government.

Oct. 3: Germany unifies.

Dec. 9: Poland elects Lech Walesa president.

July 1: Baltic states gain independence from the Soviet Union.

Dec. 25: The Soviet Union dissolves.

Technorati Tags: Berlin wall, Communism, fall, Germay, media, overkill, poland, Pope John Paul II, Solidarity, Walesa

James von Brunn

On June 10 James von Brunn entered the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, wearing a long coat and shot and killed a museum guard Stephen Johns with a .22 rifle. Johns has actually helpfully opened the door for the 88-year-old von Brunn, just before having a bullet pumped by the latter in the chest. Von Brunn was subsequently shot through the face by other guards.

Panic ensued, people run for cover, police forces of every imaginable description descended on the museum area, helicopters hovered overhead, and officials gave interview, after interview.

Stephen Johns

It was a sad and tragic event. A man died in the line of duty. I remember seeing his young son choking back the tears, as he said that he wasn’t able to see his dad before he died.

James Von Brunn is a white supremacist and an anti-Semite, who run a website, reportedly long observed by authorities and other interested groups.

In his car, police found a notebook with a handwritten note that read, “You want my weapons – this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews,”

Certainly an event that merits reporting. What gets me though is the fact that television news has been reporting on this event practically non-stop. In fact, the Washington Fox affiliate has dedicated a full 30 minutes of its one-hour newscast for two days running exclusively to the coverage of this event.

All of this while all kinds of other shootings and killings were happening both in the U.S. and abroad, while the presidential elections in Iran were about to start, while we were involved in two shooting wars, while flooding of epic proportions was inundating parts of Texas, while the WHO has declared a swine flu pandemic and so forth and so on. There were lots of important news to be reported on in addition to the museum shooting, but TV in its inimitable style has decided to run a one-story marathon.

This sort of “news sense” reminds me of a Saturday in 2003 when Eric Rudolph, accused of the Atlanta Olympic bombings was finally caught in the Smokies. On that day, CNN has made the editorial decision of broadcasting nothing but news about Rudolph for an entire day. Rudolph must have loved the attention given to his lowly person…

Americans with access to BBC World, France 24, or even al-Jazeera can probably consider themselves fortunate, it they are interested in watching newscasts that are actually prepared by professional news people, rather than by showmen.

Wonder how are the U.S. television networks going to act when something really serious happens…whether they will they have enough sense, brains and taste to handle it properly? Highly doubtful, if you ask me.

Technorati Tags: Holocaust Musem, Johns, latches, media, on, Rudolph, shooting, US, von Brunn

There’s no question that the present swine flu outbreak could potentially become a very serious pandemic. As a matter of fact scientists admit that in reality they know very little about the H1N1 virus, which is a type A influenza virus that causes mild to severe respiratory symptoms that, if bad enough, can result in death.  The virus is spread easily from person to person.

Some 159 people have died of the disease in Mexico as of this date and about 2,500  are infected. The U.S. reports 65 cases of infection and thanks in part to the ease and speed of air transportation the swine flu has by now reached practically every continent. The researchers are feverishly working to develop a vaccine against the H1N1, but don’t hold your breath. That might take months and in that time the virus could mutate further.

It is not even clear why so many people have died in Mexico, infected by a seemingly identical virus, while the cases in the U.S. appear (so far) to be relatively mild.

The best course of action appears to be avoiding contact with people, washing one’s hands, maybe even wearing a protective mask and hoping that when needed, the antiviral medicines, such as Tamiflu will actually work.

The swine flu is not a joke, but my point is the media frenzy, which has seemingly taken over the airwaves and all the other news outlets by storm. There’s a huge difference between simply reporting the news and passing along medical advice and having practically nothing besides “the latest” on the swine flu “epidemic” to offer your audience.

If you could (you cannot) believe on what they tell you on television, you might start believing that we have a full-fledged emergency on our hands, just like when Bush’s Department of Homeland Security convinced untold millions through television to buy plastic sheeting, duct tape and gas masks. Some TV channels (FOX News certainly comes to mind here) also told us that Saddam was allied with al Qaida, that Iraq held huge stockpiles of WMDs and so forth.

Our recommendation would be to wash your hands often, be careful around people and if you really develop the telling symptoms, head for the hospital – where they have oxygen and antiviral agents.

Don’t panic, don’t necessarily believe in what they tell you in the media, but as we said, the following symptoms might require immediate attention: Cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Possible diarrhea and vomiting, or difficulty breathing. Under these circumstances you probably should see a medical professional or even visit a hospital. These symptoms do not necessarily represent the H1N1 strain of the swine flu, but it might be a good idea to treat it as such initially…just in case.

Technorati Tags: frenzy, media, swine flu

As we all know, former governor of New York State is just that, a former governor.

Eliot Spitzer, formerly known as “Mr. Clean” and “The Sheriff of Wall Street” was caught in flagrante delicto with a high-priced hooker. It might be interesting to note that Spitzer is (was) a Democratic super delegate pledged to support Hillary Clinton.

Whether Mr. Spitzer was unhappy with the sexual life he was having in his marriage with his wife Silda (and who isn’t after a few years?), or not should not really be discussed outside of his family. The point is, why is it that every sexual scandal leads to a political and professional downfall in this country of ours, which is still burdened by primitive and disgusting Puritan ideology?

For those still trying to defend the people, who first landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, let me quickly explain that there was a very good reason indeed, why these religious fanatics wanted to leave England and why they weren’t wanted in Holland either. Puritans were some of the most loathsome people, to ever hold power in England. Their bloody, cruel and fanatical rule is one of the truly dark periods of history. When they established a colony in America, some of the same disgusting habits were carried across the ocean. Just look at the Salem witch trials, The Scarlet Letter, etc.

And a lot of that same kind of backward fanaticism seems to still pervade our society and culture now.

Eliot Spitzer’s downfall is also at least partly due to the fact that as New York’s Attorney General he has busted a couple of prostitution rings and put fighting corruption in the forefront of his agenda. And now, after years of using adjectives such as “unsavory”, “deceptive” and “tainted”, Mr. Spitzer can also consider himself seriously tainted.

The latest affair of course marks him as a hypocrite, for sure, but frankly, which politician isn’t one?

The sexual affairs and misconduct of FDR, JFK and LBJ were common knowledge, but nobody seemed to mind, as long as they were doing the job they were elected to do. After all, even politicians should have the right to be human and horny. The sexual problems surfaced in a media circus when the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair was uncovered.

It almost seems like the Puritan ideology has become more important lately, almost as important as at the time of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. Are we sliding back into the dark ages again? Doesn’t the media have anything else to concentrate on in the age of genocide in Iraq?

The fact that Spitzer was stupid and desperate enough to shell out as “Client 9″ some $4,300 for three hours with a (probably) cute, “Kristen”, “a petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, 105 pounds” is dumb. Maybe he should have resigned, but why the media feeding frenzy again? The fact that he was screwing hookers should largely be an issue between him and his wife and if he wasn’t attractive and sexy enough to get some pussy, even while being a governor and obviously wealthy, should be his problem, not mine. As Willie Nelson said in a recent interview: ” Money makes women horny”. Enough said!

Technorati Tags: clinton, dark ages, eliot spitzer, media, politics, puritans, scandal, sexual