wednesday reads

Sibel Edmonds: Two Sides of the Same Coin


Recently declassified documents obtained by investigators Jeremy Bigwood and Eva Golinger reveal that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has invested more than $97 million in “decentralization” and “regional autonomy” projects and opposition political parties in Bolivia since 2002. (Bolivia Rising)


Andy Kroll: The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold


Scott Horton: Cheney Prepares the Twinkie Defense


Robert Reich: Sotomayor and the Republicans


'Western Germany Wants Stasi's Influence to Remain Hidden' (Spiegel Online)

The revelation that the policeman who shot Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 was a spy for the Stasi East German intelligence service has led to an intense historical debate in Germany. Ohnesorg's death radicalized many students and is seen as one of the factors that lead to the 1968 student protest movement and the emergence of the far-left Baader-Meinhof terrorist group.

Now Germany is asking itself what would have happened if people had known that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the policeman who fired the fatal shot and became the epitome of what students saw as an authoritarian West German establishment, was a communist and a Stasi informant? Would 1968 have happened? Would the country have been terrorized by left-wing urban guerrillas for over a decade?