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On Berlin


A profound reason why the fall of the Berlin Wall is not celebrated in Germany as many think it should be (i.e. as a yearly holiday akin to the Fourth of July), is that the duality of human nature is strikingly burned into the history of this day. November 9 should be a day of quiet reflection, for the day embodies both both the great and diabolical deeds of which we are capable. 71 years ago today, the night of November 9, 1938, the National Socialists ran through the streets of "the Reich" pillaging and destroying. Today, in the memory of many Germans and Jews, is not only the joy of that day of freedom in 1989 present, but so too is the frightful memory of that first great pogrom of the Holocaust, Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass).

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Thank you for the reminder to me to give some silent contemplation for the Kristallnacht victims and their families, LetterB.

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To this day, I see no difference between what occurred on Kristallnacht and what happened at Miami-Dade during the attempt to perform the recount in 2004.

"But the government reaction to the two events was dramatically different. The clashes between police and Vietnam War protesters in 1968 led the Nixon administration to charge seven anti-war radicals with “conspiring to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot.” The defendants, who became known as the Chicago Seven, were later acquitted of conspiracy charges, in part, because the protests were loosely organized and because solid documentary evidence was lacking.

After the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” – named after the protesters’ preppie clothing – no government action was taken beyond the police rescuing several Democrats who were surrounded and roughed up by the rioters. While no legal charges were filed against the Republicans, newly released documents show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush’s recount committee.

The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records – released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service last month, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. Overall, the records provide a road map of how the Bush recount team brought its operatives across state lines to stop then-Vice President Al Gore’s recount efforts.

The records show that the Bush committee spent a total of $13.8 million to frustrate the recount of Florida’s votes and secure the state's crucial electoral votes for Bush. By contrast, the Gore recount operation spent $3.2 million, about one quarter of the Bush total. Bush spent more just on lawyers – $4.4 million – than Gore did on his entire effort."

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First there is Kristallnacht on 9 Nov. Then The Day the Wall Came Down on 10 Nov. Finally, Armistice Day on 11 Nov. Of the three, Wall Day is the only one were the people of Germany find themselves a whole people again. It's a lesson learned, a humiliating, hard way, never to be repeated again. But it's the beginning of a new path.

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