[Peace-discuss] East Germany

[Bob Illyes]

I was in Germany for a week following the collapse of East Germany. I tried 
to have a conversation with some of the folks who were demonstrating in the 
Munich city center for Amnesty International, trying to talk about how now 
that the USSR had collapsed, fascism was coming out of the closet. Neither 
their English nor my German were really up to this task.

In the Pension where I slept, while sitting in the breakfast room watching 
German television, I watched an old German farmer, with tears running down 
his face, talking about the collapse of collective farming. I can't give 
you an exact account of what he said, because my German is marginal. I have 
never seen a farmer cry in my entire life except on German television.

What happened in East Germany after its collapse is very wrong regarding 
state property, and has a lot in common with what our government is trying 
to do in Iraq.

Bob