Word: dieters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Call him Dieter. Do not expect much in the way of personal data -- his exact age, his address, his last name. As far as Dieter is concerned, the only fact that has any meaning these days is that until a few months ago, he was a member of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, the now defunct secret-police force known and reviled by East Germans as the Stasi. Once employment by the elite Stasi was a way of life. Now it is the curse of Dieter's existence. "Everybody has forgotten that we worked to make this country safe," he says. "We were...
...What Dieter is left with is his anger, his bitterness and his fear. As the young man chain-smokes acrid Club cigarettes and glances nervously at passersby in an East Berlin hotel lobby, he notes that common citizens are now policing the former Stasis. Many tradesmen refuse service to ex-agents. Gasoline stations have posted signs denying them petrol, and job notices often specify that dismissed Stasis need not apply. When three ex-agents showed up at an East Berlin slaughterhouse in search of jobs, workmen locked them in a storage refrigerator for two hours. The Stasis no longer feel...
Though the Stasis propped up an unpopular Communist regime for more than four decades and were notorious for their disregard of privacy and occasional beatings of prisoners, Dieter cannot understand why so much loathing is aimed his way. He insists he was only a maintenance man in a Stasi center, a mere speck in an elaborate organization that not only offered full-time employment to 85,000 people but also provided pocket money to a network of 109,000 citizens who snooped on their neighbors and co-workers...
Unlike most of his former colleagues, Dieter has found work -- this time as a regular policeman in East Berlin. He has started walking a beat, and earns a monthly wage of 1,600 East German marks, which is worth about $330 in buying power and is almost equal to his Stasi pay. (A few former agents have even found employment as policemen in West Germany.) But Dieter has lost a packet of coveted perks, among them paid vacations at choice resorts along the Baltic coast. Because the Stasis were in a special category set apart from the typical East German...
...York City's most famous dieter, Mayor Edward Koch, lost weight on a VLCD earlier this year and promptly regained it. Worse, he described the formula as "swill." Still, doctors say liquid diets may offer a lasting answer for the very obese. Notes Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania: "This is a reasonable way to lose weight. Whether it's better than losing weight slowly over a long period of time we really don't know...