Word: easternism
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...border force. By early August, the junta was accusing Peng of being behind an illegal arms-and-drugs factory. The illicit activity, claimed the regime, compelled it to invade Kokang turf, even though the warlord's business proclivities had been an open secret for years. Indeed, both the Eastern Shan and Wa are also believed to have financed themselves through such shady means; the latter's southern commander, Wei Hsueh-kang, has been singled out by the U.S. Treasury Department as a major drug trafficker. Indeed, one battle-avoiding option for the junta is luring corrupt ethnic elders...
...impulse by producing consensus-driven coalition governments. It's pretty safe to assume that whatever coalition emerges from the election, it will not include Die Linke, a hard-left party formed by Western socialists and remnants of the G.D.R. communists. But Die Linke's likely decent performance in the eastern states also speaks to promise unfulfilled. Ossis - Easterners - vote differently from Wessis - Westerners - because they still perceive their interests as being different. Ossis earn less, produce less and have higher rates of unemployment than Wessis. According to a recent survey by the eastern German charity Volkssolidarit...
...darker side to ostalgie, a yearning for the old order among elderly Ossis to whom life in reunited Germany hasn't always proved kind. Hubertus Knabe - the director of Hohenschönhausen, a former G.D.R. prison and now a memorial - argues that the success of Die Linke in the eastern states reveals a dangerous form of amnesia. His book Honeckers Erben (Honecker's Heirs) depicts Die Linke as direct descendants of G.D.R. leader Erich Honecker's repressive communist regime. "It's a very human quality to whitewash the past," he says. But he adds the warning: "It means...
...expression of modern Germany's desire to acknowledge its difficult history. Yet for every memorial, there's also a theme-park rendition of the past. At Potsdamer Platz you can have your picture taken with smiling "border guards" next to remounted Wall panels, decorated with faux graffiti on their eastern faces. "It's disgusting," says Knabe. "And it makes harmless something far from harmless." (Read: "The Battle For Berlin...
...Such laments are common among older Ossis. They get short shrift from Niebank. Life after she settled in West Berlin didn't prove easy - she divorced in 1970. She has worked hard and dutifully shelled out her "solidarity taxes" to lift the eastern German economy. "We had to pay for the East," she says, "but they're full of envy." Young Germans, she says, have moved on. "My sons have absolutely no interest in history. They've never asked me about how I survived the war and they're not interested in the Wall," says Niebank. "Young people think...